Sharjah Narrative Forum Concludes its 20th Session in Tunisia

Discussion of the History and Developments of the Tunisian Short Story

Sharjah Narrative Forum Concludes its 20th Session in Tunisia

Participants: Sharjah is the Beating Heart of Arab Culture

Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia

The Sharjah Narrative Forum concluded the activities of its 20th session, held in the Republic of Tunisia over two days under the title "The New Short Story: Transformations in Form and Structure." The event saw the participation of over 50 creators, including novelists, short story writers, academics, and critics from Tunisia.

The forum was held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Mohammad Al Qasimi, Member of the Supreme Council and Ruler of Sharjah, and it focused on the critical field of narrative across all its creative forms.

The closing ceremony was held at the Palace of the Star of Zahra in Sidi Bou Said, the capital of Tunisia, in the presence of His Excellency Abdullah Al Owais, Chairman of the Department of Culture in Sharjah, Professor Mohammed Ibrahim Al Qaseer, Director of the Cultural Affairs Department in the Department of Culture, Jamila Al Magri, Director of the House of Poetry in Kairouan, and a large number of critics, academics, researchers, and specialists in the field of narrative.

On the final day, discussions were held on the third and fourth axes, in addition to a session of testimonials presented by a group of Tunisian creators.

“The 3rd Focus"

The third focus was titled "Transformations and Their Impact on the Art of the New Short Story," and was discussed by Dr. Mustafa Al-Kilani, Dr. Samah Hamdi, and Bashir Al Jeljili, with the session chaired by Samir Bin Ali.

Dr. Samah Hamdi’s paper, "The Tunisian Short Story and the Path of Transformations in Form and Structure," highlighted the key features distinguishing the history of the Tunisian short story from its inception at the beginning of the last century to the present. She noted that the short story has undergone four major phases: the initial emergence, the Douagi period, literary maturity, and the narrative revolution.

She pointed out that each of these phases saw the short story closely tied to its reality and responsive to people's lives, expressing their dreams and writing about them, striving to illuminate the paths for people to confront the truths of their days.

Hamdi stated, "Throughout all this, the short story did not settle easily with its state. It sought, alongside Douagi and his new writers, especially Isa Jebli, to renew its style, liberate its language, and dare to deconstruct what the eye does not see—or sees but does not care about—captured by the mind. This has led to it living today as an adventure in writing and life, or rather, as an adventure in life through writing."

In his paper titled "The Aesthetics of Concise and Flash Fiction, Referencing Arabic Short Story Models," Mustafa Al-Kilani noted that modern and contemporary Arabic narrative is experimental in its early stages and remains experimental to this day. Therefore, it is not stable in its stylistic characteristics, and its structures are closer to constant formation.

He added, "The Arabic literary taste, at the beginning of accepting modern narratives, confused the novel, short story, and play, especially in the phase of adaptation. This blend continued between forms of modern narrative writing in our Arabic literature. Modern and contemporary Arabic literature saw the emergence of the short story in newspapers before the novel solidified its form, or rather the novel, through its cumulative path, did not clearly distinguish itself from the short story. This is also true for Tunisian literature, similar to modern and contemporary literary experiences, as seen in the short stories of Ali Douagi and Mohamed Al-Areebi, for example, more than two decades before the novel, specifically in the 1940s and 1950s."

Bashir Al-Jeljili presented a paper titled "The Time of Crisis in Contemporary Tunisian Short Stories (Between the Crisis of Reality and the Crisis of Genre)," noting that the study of the time of crisis in Tunisian short stories is a project critics have been working on for a while, studying narrative texts and how their structures are formed according to succession at times and disruption at others, and often surpassing the study of the relationship between structure, content, and meaning.

Al-Jeljili disagreed with Todorov’s belief that new literary genres are transformations of one or several genres, particularly concerning the very short story genre, which many critics believe developed from the short story.

Al-Jeljili clarified in his discussion that the short story genre is self-sufficient and created from itself. He noted that Todorov’s view, mentioned earlier in response to the question of where genres come from, is what created the crisis of genre classification. He stated, "The prevailing view is that the short story, which is a recent genre in Arabic culture, may have developed from the fable, the anecdote, and the parable, despite the fact that the social and historical conditions between these genres and the short story differ significantly, knowing that the short story has not yet established an ideal structure like the novel, despite the three units agreed upon by many."