Essam Youssef - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Essam Youssef

Ain Shams University: Middle East Center for Researches Press, 2007

Larkin's exquisite use of wintry images in A Girl in Winter is the main source of the seriousness... more Larkin's exquisite use of wintry images in A Girl in Winter is the main source of the seriousness and universality of its experience. In presenting these images and interweaving them with the theme, Larkin has shown a poetic touch, causing his readers no surprise on knowing later that he has become a famous poet. The novel depends for its effect on the pictorial description of that wintry setting which besieges a refugee cast out from an unnamed European country to England by the destructive war. These wintry images provide a suitable background for such a rootless girl who is suffering from loneliness, desolation and deprivation.

Ain Shams University: Middle East Center for Researches Pressss, 2006

The conflict between imagination and reality is a recurrent theme in Wallace Stevens' poetry. It ... more The conflict between imagination and reality is a recurrent theme in Wallace Stevens' poetry. It has obsessed his mind throughout his career. This paper tackles the reality-imagination complex in Stevens' poem, The Man with the Blue Guitar.

Cairo University Centre, Hermes, vol 5, no. 3, pp. 267-321, 2016

This paper deals with Atwood's perspective of regaining the lost harmony between human beings and... more This paper deals with Atwood's perspective of regaining the lost harmony between human beings and nature, adopting an ecofeminist approach to see how far woman and nature are related to each other, and how they are treated in a male-oriented society. The paper aims at shedding intensive light on the relationship between humans and nature, and how it can be promoted. Some questions about this relationship are raised in the introduction to be answered through analyzing a number of significant poems from Atwood's The Animals in That Country, and the conclusion comes with the replies to these questions: Firstly, nature is a living whole of which we are an indivisible part. In modern society, nature is excessively exploited and terrifyingly endangered because of the use of destructive technology and harmful pollutants. Secondly, animals are part and parcel of nature and, consequently, they are negatively affected by man's irresponsible behaviour towards it. They are so massively killed and driven out of their habitat that many species have died out and others are on their way to extinction. Thirdly, a woman's relationship with nature is so close and organic that each of them affects and is affected by the other. In a patriarchal society, women, like nature and animals, are oppressed and devalued. Fourthly, Atwood asserts that in order to regain harmony with nature, human beings must make a return to it to reconnect with their roots because alienation from nature is crippling. Atwood believes that the cause of all kinds of oppression is the colonial patriarchal ideology of treating woman as innately inferior to man, and nature to culture. Therefore, the whole patriarchal system should be demolished to have a fairer society to women and nature, and to regain that lost harmony with nature.

Ain Shams University: Faculty of Education Press, 2005

Peter Barnes' Red Noses is one of the funniest plays written about the Black Death. It is an amaz... more Peter Barnes' Red Noses is one of the funniest plays written about the Black Death. It is an amazing mixture of comedy and tragedy, laughter and despair, which reflects Barnes' specialty in making humour out of the darkest of human situations. Barnes' humour is black because of the blackness of the play's topic, which reflects the absurdity and cruelty of life. The play depicts the various responses of the medieval society to this incomprehensible disaster. It is "a three-course meal," rich in entertainment, ideas and attitudes. Humour springs from the gap between the characters' aspirations and the reality of their situations. Here, Barnes uses jokes (good or bad, verbal or visual), puns, gags, irony, satire and slapsticks as sources for his humour. His satirical humour is sometimes more effective than daggers or swords. He uses a joke as an instrument of change. The play is a cry for religious, social and political change. Barnes has papal seats, royal thrones and judicial benches as the target of his scathing satire, which unfolds their hypocrisy and denounces their moral corruption and abuses of authority.

Cairo University: Cairo University Press, 2002

This paper discusses Seamus Heaney's dualistic attitude towards women, illustrated in many analys... more This paper discusses Seamus Heaney's dualistic attitude towards women, illustrated in many analysed quotations from his poetry. It this double attitude which reflects the duality of his attitude towards England, the colonizer of his native country.