Figures of Speech and Tropes in Diaa Jubaili’s al-Mašṭūr : A Stylistic Analysis

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines Diaa Jubaili’s novel al-Mašṭūr: sittu ṭarāʾiq ġayr šarʿiyya li-ʾijtiyāz al-ḥudūd naḥwa Baġdād (المشطور: ست ّ طرائق غير شرعية لإجتياز الحدود نحو بغداد) (The Cloven Man: Six Illegal Ways of Crossing the Borders to Baghdad), by analyzing how its figures of speechand tropes, specifically metaphor, metonymy, and symbolism, reflect Iraq’s recent turbulent history. Over the last fifty years, Iraq has experienced repeated wars and internal conflicts, conditions that have strongly influenced its modern literature. The novel al-Mašṭūr, published in 2017, follows the fantastical journey of Potamia and Meso, two halves of a man killed and split in half by terrorists. The two halves travel across Iraq in search of Italo Calvino’s novel The Cloven Viscount2, hoping to find a way to restore their original form. Their encounters along Iraq’s many border regions create a narrative rich in stylistic devices that highlight themes of fragmentation, trauma, and identity in a country shaped by decades of instability. By using stylistic analysis and narratology, this study investigates how Jubaili employs figurative language to represent experiences of division, displacement, and the ongoing presence of violence in Iraq’s collective memory. The thesis argues that al-Mašṭūr participates in a wider tradition of Iraqi literature that grapples with war and the human search for wholeness.