محمد غازي الغامدي MOHAMMED GHAZI ALGHAMDI

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الرسالة هي عبارة عن (مقارنة أدبية بين الأدب الإمريكي والأدب السعودي) عنوان الرسالة: INSCRIBING THE NATION AND REFORMING ITS MARGINS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF 19th CENTURY AMERICAN AND 20th CENTURY AND CONTEMPORARY SAUDI LITERATURES This dissertation examines how the concept of the nation in nineteenth century American literature and twentieth century and contemporary Saudi Arabian literature is represented in an array of relevant works. Nineteenth century American and contemporary Saudi writers inscribe the nation in different ways. Reading their works gives us a sense of their conceptions of nation as a political and/or a social community. Writers examined in this dissertation often see the nation as a threat to marginalized groups, due to its cultural, religious and political constraints. Writers tend to represent the tension between individuals and communities as a significant key to understanding a particular nation. This tension carries in it a sense of the boundaries of the nation. It is a question of who is part of the nation and who is not. The constraints of a certain nation, be they political or social, include the dominant by excluding the repressed or the marginalized. In other words, by exposing the tension between disenfranchised and dominant groups, writers define, redefine and reform for us the national political and social scenes of a particular nation. This study is divided into two parts: “An Hypothesis of Inscribing the Nation,” and “Reading the Nation.” The first part defines the concept of the nation and its relevance to literature, and offers readers a framework to facilitate the comparative study of American and Saudi writers within the context of each nation’s history and the emergence of their respective national literatures. The second part is divided topically, presenting comparisons of particular texts from the two national literary traditions: “Politics and the Nation” compares Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849) and Hamza Shehata’s “Manhood is the Essence of Worthy Ethics” (1981); “Religion and the Nation” examines Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and Abdo Khal’s Immorality or Fosooq (2005); “Women and the Nation” focuses on Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1898) and Raja Alem’s Sanctuary or Sitt’er (2005); and “Race and the Nation” discusses Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition (1901) and Alwan Alsuhaymi’s The Tar (2012). The conclusion, “The Evolution of the Nation,” demonstrates how the nation’s political, religious, gender, and racial scenes can be understood and defined through examining the tension between marginalized groups and their nations, thus marking the nation as an evolving phenomenon.