Document Type
Article
Source of Publication
Humanities (Switzerland)
Publication Date
2-1-2023
Abstract
This feminist semiotic study explores the folkloric imaginary of the jinn in the context of children’s and young adults’ Arab Gothic literature. Across the Middle East, the jinn is a common trope in literature, folklore and oral storytelling who, in diegetic terms, can manifest as the Gothic figure of an aging female, deranged older woman or succubus (known as sa’lawwa in Arabic). In this study, a novel feminist semiotic framework is developed to explore the extent to which the Gothic female succubus either haunts or liberates Arab girls’ coming-of-age fictions. This issue is addressed via a feminist semiotic reading of the narratives of Middle Eastern woman author @Ranoy7, exploring the appeal of her scary stories presented on YouTube. Findings reveal tacit fears, ambivalences and tensions embodied within the Arab Gothic sign of the aging female succubus or jinn. Overall, the research develops feminist insights into the semiotic motif of the female jinn and its role in constituting Arab females as misogynistic gendered sign objects in the context of the social media story explored.
DOI Link
ISSN
Publisher
MDPI AG
Volume
12
Issue
1
Disciplines
Education
Keywords
Arab children, coming-of-age, female-homosocial spaces, feminist semiotics, fictions, Gothic, literary imaginary, social media, teenage fiction
Scopus ID
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Hurley, Zoe and Hojeij, Zeina, "Coming-of-Age of Teenage Female Arab Gothic Fiction: A Feminist Semiotic Study" (2023). All Works. 5730.
https://zuscholars.zu.ac.ae/works/5730
Indexed in Scopus
yes
Open Access
yes
Open Access Type
Gold: This publication is openly available in an open access journal/series