الفهرس 
IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Philosophers, poets, dramatists, novelists, and critics have always been preoccupied with man’s journey to help others, to know better, to search for meaning, voice, or truth. Though the quest of the journey may vary, at its heart lies a conflict that questions man’s abilities and destiny. Cuddon defines a protagonist as “the principal male and female characters in a work of literature. In the criticism the terms carry no connotations of virtuousness or honour. An evil man and a wicked woman might be the central characters, like Macbeth and lady Macbeth” (329). The presentation has never been that simple because the idea of a man or a woman who is chosen to be a hero or a villain is by nature complex. Existence can be shrouded in mystery, fear, anxiety, love, or hope. The options are unlimited because literature attempts to explore the most valuable thing to us as humans; namely life journey. The story of a man as well as a woman who has gone through hidden lands of inner and outer worlds, begins with once upon a time, continues till the moment of writing these lines, and will last. Like all good stories from history, they portray man’s journey as ignited by many whys, where a man/woman plays the role of a detective with many whys to ask and answer. Literary imitations of this journey have flourished producing unlimited protagonists who have made people what they are now. Each protagonist tells a part of man’s existence in his attempt to answer a why.
At the heart of every literary presentation lies a question: what privileges or flaws this man or this woman must have in order that he or she may be in this position or that, and so be honored or disgraced. The idea of hero versus villain seems to have many variations and among these variations there has been many in-between men or women who are not good enough to be heroes or heroines, but at the same time not devilish enough to be villains. The hero, the anti-hero, the villain are the variations through which a man or a woman goes. Sometimes a protagonist can begin as a villain but ends as a hero or vice versa. It can be assumed that the core of defining heroism is in constant change. In Frye’s words, “there is a problematic of different, conflicting images of hero” (Anatomy of Criticism 23). It all depends on the privileges or flaws that spring from the way the poet views man, the destiny of man, man’s relation to his world.
The idea of the fallen hero who is inherently good but ultimately damned is as ancient as both hero and villain. These “conflicting images” seem to be a continuation of the long inherited literary tradition. In order to perceive and illuminate the way these long conflicting images of heroism construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct the kind of man’s heroism on earth. My choice to investigate the concept of the fallen hero seeks to answer certain questions such as who is the first anti-hero/heroine? What can differentiate the anti-hero from the ideal, the romantic, the tragic hero and the villain? What role does it play in the literary scene? How far has it affected our conception of man’s reality? This process will be clarified through a detailed examination of English literature. Then, in order to communicate the concept of anti-heroism, the dissertation discusses anti-heroism as portrayed by George Gordon Noel Lord Byron in his masterpiece Don Juan; by Salah Abdul Saboor in Night Traveller, The Princess Waits, Leila and the Madman, Now the King is Dead, and by Mohammed Enani in The Night of Gold, It’s your Turn, Life Preserver, The Tale of Meeza. My task is simultaneously simplified and complicated by the fact that many books and articles have tackled each protagonist independently, or within his cultural context. By doing so, those critics confine each protagonist to the issues of his literary tradition. Ignoring or underestimating the striking psychological and universal features common to all. Thus, my prime aim, here, is to shed light on an unexplored area; namely, the fallen hero as represented by the three poets. And how their attempts to create anti-heroes/heroines parallel their unconscious personal exploration of their psyches, communities, religion, and cultures. The dissertation attempts to deal with Byron, Abdul Saboor, and Enani as poets who manage through individual efforts, to see better and deeper into reality, to attain patterns of truth inaccessible to ordinary knowledge, and to communicate their frustrations, disappointments, and hopes to others. The purpose of focusing on their poetry, as a way of exploring the human psyche and its dark mysteries, is to explore the way in which Byron, Abdul Saboor, and Enani intend their poetry to work. The dissertation attempts to follow, therefore, a multitude of anti-heroic figures through the selected works in order to reveal what Franz Boas calls: “[an] appalling monotony of the fundamental ideas of mankind all over the globe… Certain patterns of associated ideas may be recognized in all types of culture” (The Mind of Primitive Man, 155-228). This will help us to understand not only the meaning of those anti-heroic images, but also the way these anti-heroic figures reveal the common features of the human spirit—its aspirations, fears, disappointments and failures.