FEMME FATALE POETRY BETWEEN FLR AND ACCOMPLICE ARABIC AND ENGLISH DELINEATION

Abstract

The portrayal of the femme fatale is quite common in the literature: a persona defies all and then finds inevitable choices to die as a master or to live as a slave, to stay in a female-led relationship, FLR, or an accomplice for certain intents. The current paper delimits itself to tracing the differences and similarities between three samples from the Arabic and English poetry on the femme fatale to trace five functions in the light of an eclectic model that the study creates after applying both the classical literary Arabic theory and feminist literary criticism to the samples in question: Political Function, Societal Function, Moral Function, Authority Function. Elegiac Function. As for the functionality of the femme fatale, it strikes deep roots in various spheres of knowledge; literature and social sciences. Some try to prove it psychologically; some, politically; but in literature in general, and poetry in particular, it takes hold of five functions. It wields panoramic, versatile isles in the East and West poems that are respectively Elegy on Imam Al-Hassan, Affinity between Prophethood and Imamate, No Oblivion for Imam al-Hassan, La Belle Dame sans Merci, On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery, and Body`s Beauty. The statistical part will have so much to say: a/function/s the East or the West employ more than other functions, “how?” and “why?”