REPRESENTATION OF ISLAM IN POST 9/11 ENGLISH NOVELS

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Ph.D. DISSERTATION IN

ENGLISH LITERATURE

REPRESENTATION OF ISLAM IN

POST 9/11 ENGLISH NOVELS

Present research aims to study the representation of Islam in post 9/11 English novels. To this aim 3o post 9/11 English novels were divided into eight categories based on the angles from which they had looked at 9/11 event, and one novel of each category, a better received one,  was chosen through cluster sampling to be studied. As the study went on two categories were deleted for not being related to the subject. Thus six novels by Updike, Del Lillo, Ferrigno, See, Halaby, and Kalfus were studied. Using representation theory and Foucault’s discursive formation approach, the effort was taken to identify the latent and manifest discourses shaping and shaped by these texts as well as the characteristics attributed to Islam and Muslims. The results showed that the discourse shaping the texts (War against Terrorism) and discourses shaped by the texts (Muslims are all the same, Muslims are violent and promote violence, Zionists are innocent) not only support the power discourse, and prove the image represented of Muslims unreal, baseless, and void of scholarly value, but also there seems to be a trace of a political mission in most writers’ image making. This of course has the potentiality of hurting the readers’ trust in these novels and their writers, and can therefore be considered a threat to English literature. The approach taken by two out of the six novels was of course subversive toward the power or dominant discourse, which proves the society a multiple voice society. The opposite voice is heard though not as well as the supportive voice.

KEY WORDS: Representation, Islam, Muslims, Discourse, 9/11, Novel