Modes of Articulations of the General Ideology, and the Ideologies of the Author and the Text: “Diary of a Hin” by Ishaq Musa Al Husseini as a Model

Mousa M. Khoury

Abstract

Among all the Palestinian novels published before 1948, Ishaq Musa Al Husseini’s novel “Diary of a Hin” (1942) remains the most prominent and reviewed novel in the books of literary criticism and the books that chronicled the Palestinian literature; moreover, it remains, along with the rest of the novels published before the aforementioned year, a wide sphere to other new readings that the previous readings did not exhaust or failed to cover.

After an introduction to the beginnings of the Palestinian novel, putting Al Husseini’s novel in context, shedding a light on previous important studies, and showing its trends in reading the novel, this study, in its first demand, evokes a theoretical framework based on the study of literature and ideology by the English critic Terry Eglton, particularly in the section regarding the general ideology at the time of text’s production, author’s ideology, and the text’s ideology as well. After establishing the critical approach in the first demand, the study reviews, in its second demand, the nuances between the Allegorical parable employed by the novel and the symbol, it also specifies the biblical Intertextuality within. Hence, the third demand presents the modes of articulations of the general ideology, author’s ideology, down to the ideology of the novel’s text. The study concludes that the novel “Diary of a Hen” is a disjunct, despite the divergence of the previous studies’ readings, from the Palestinian general ideology during the era of the British Mandate in Palestine.