Liberation in the poetry of the Palestinian Fadwa Tuqan

Abstract

This article presents the Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan (1917-2003), her hesitation to step off in literature as a woman raised in a conservative society, her first steps in literary writing and the further transformation of her poetry. Forbidden by her family to attend school and leave home, she tells in her autobiography that she found freedom from such restriction in the study and writing of poetry. When she began to interact with other poetics, especially the work of Iraqi Názik Almalaika, who proposed a reflection on new forms that broke with the traditional model of Arab literature, she found an encouraging literary form to write her own poetry. In addition to these changes there were thematic transformations motivated by the events that changed the course of Palestinian history, notably the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The article shows that literary innovation was liberating and paved the way for the insertion of women in literature, moving away from traditional forms of discourse valued in the history of Arab literature until the beginning of the 20th century.