A Semiotic Study of “Contemplation of Estrangement Features”: “Leave Me Alone” as a Model

Abstract

Contemplation of Estrangement Features is the title of one of the story series by the Jordanian story writer, Teriz Haddad.^[1] This study aims to critically and analytically survey this series according to the semiotic principles, in an attempt to uncover the main narrative elements, aesthetic features, and the ideological, social, artistic and aesthetic contents of the series. This story series is important because it is one of the relatively early models of feminist literature in general and of short stories in Jordan in particular. In addition, this series is written by a Jordanian story writer whose works have not been criticized and studied sufficiently. This is probably because I made an attempt to search for a critical report or study of this story series, but I found nothing. The study consists of an introduction and three parts. The first part deals with the series’ title as a “paratext” helping to convey the meaning of the series and sketch it out. The second part, however, gives a general look at the series’ stories, where their summaries and paramount occurrences and ideas as well as their paramount techniques are presented. Finally, the last part came to deal, in some detail, with the story Leave Me Alone. This story has been analyzed and its most important artistic elements have been studied. Such elements include: The narrator, language, place, time and impression integrity. In the conclusion of the study, the most important results of the research have been incorporated.

Received: 30 November 2021 / Accepted: 3 February 2022 / Published: 5 March 2022