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‫دائرة‬

Sermo in circulis
‫القلم‬
est liberior.
Issue N° 37 – October-December 2015
Journal of the Department of English
Sultan Moulay Slimane Univ., Faculty of Arts & Humanities, Beni Mellal, Morocco.
Editor: Khalid Chaouch.
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
Editorial: Dependence Mentality and Initiative Spirit ... 02
The Poet’s Corner:
“The Compulsory Reasons” by Mohammed AL-MAGHOUT … 03
“The Poet and the Fool” and “Great Gaza Goes”
by Rachid ACIM … 04
“The Arabian Nights and World Literature: A Tentative Short
Survey” by Elhoussaine AAMMARI … 06
Pen Circle Prize (2015/2016) … 09
Middle Ground, Journal of the Research Laboratory on Culture
and Communication (Issue N° 6): „Occidentalism vs. Orientalism.' 10
RLCC International Conference on “Shakespeares: Critical
Perspectives Past and Present (Call for Papers)… 12
Pungent Quotations on Fools, Insanity and Madness … 14
Clues to “Crosswords” N° 36 ... 14
Crosswords N° 37 ... 15
Courses Framework of the Fall Semesters (1, 3, and 5) … 16
 Pen Circle
Sultan Moulay Slimane University
Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Department of English
BP. 524, Beni Mellal, Morocco.
Fax: 212 (0) 5 23 48 17 69
Email: pencircle@gmail.com
Pen Circle is also available at www.flshbm.ma Publications
Editorial Board
Mly. Lmustapha MAMAOUI, Mohamed RAKII, Redouan SAÏDI.
Pen Circle n° 37 -2-

EDITORIAL
Dependence Mentality
and
Initiative Spirit
In our daily life as well as in many of our institutions, it is
crystal clear that, in many cases, things work this way: Everybody,
from the simple clerk to the supposed responsible, shakes off
responsibility, because nobody feels or wants to feel that they are the
responsible. Following from this, no one should ever boast of being
responsible.
Fortunately, this is not always the case, and such a state of mind
should never be seen as an inevitable fate. There are certainly some
orders and a general policy to be followed. But this fact should not
become a tether to the creative genius, especially to those endowed
with an INITIATIVE SPIRIT. Why should everyone always wait for
someone else to tell them what to do and what not to do? This
waiting spirit has undoubtedly generated a dependence mentality. That is,
the person on the ground (in any field) has become – in many cases –
dependent on officials of higher rank as regards plans, ideas, and
even details of how to implement the practical side of one‟s own
task.
The prevalence of this mentality never provides the fertile ground for
the emergence of enterprising, dynamic and inventive persons in all
our institutions: administration, companies, factories, universities,
schools, and even Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).
In this situation, only people who have the “head on (not between)
the shoulders” could really take initiatives and make decisions. We
need them… and badly.
Khalid CHAOUCH
Pen Circle n° 37 -3-
The Poet’s Corner
This corner is devoted both to prominent figures in poetry and to ambitious students who dare
to embark on the process of creative writing. Students‟ attempts should be sent by email or
presented in legible handwriting, and submitted to a member of Pen Circle Editorial Board.
The Compulsory Reasons1
by Mohammed Al-Maghout

Whenever freedom rained down anywhere in the world,


Arab regimes rush out to cover their people with umbrellas,
fearing that they would “catch cold.”
Why would the Arabs appear to cling to everything and anything?
Are they about to drown?
Everything around us is cracking and collapsing.
Where are the ruins?
Did they sell them already?
All are collapsing,
and all want to shore up each other.
Whenever two Arabs meet,
intelligence services make a third.
With your hands trembling,
you cannot hit any target.
Whatever sky they circle,
the Arab clouds and the Arab planes
war with each other and their surroundings,
like all Arab communities on earth.
Martyrs fall on the sidewalks,
while the despots march in the roads
And any Arab unity
lies in the mass graves.
When the people have nearly ceased to believe in anything,
their leaders have become the pious faithful!!
Mohammed Al-Maghout (1934-2006), a Syrian poet and playwright, is regarded as the
father of the Arabic free verse poetry. He wrote for theater, TV and cinema. With a sarcastic
tone and dreary outlook, Maghout combined satire with descriptions of social misery and
malaise, illustrating what he viewed as an ethical decline among rulers in the region. Some of
his themes included the problems of injustice and totalitarian governments. Most of his
renowned poems are: Sadness in the Moon Light (“Huzn fi daw elqamar”, 1959), A Room
with Millions of Walls (“Gurfa bi malayin al-judrán”, 1964), Joy is not my Profession (“Al-
farah laysa mihnati”, 1970) and The Flower Cutter (“Sayaf al-zohour”, 2001).
Suggested by Elhoussaine AAMMARI
1
“The Compulsory Reasons” is an excerpt from a longer poem by Mohammed Al- Maghout
in “Sayyaf al-Zuhur” (Flower Cutter), published by Dar al-Mada, Damascus, 2001. This poem
is translated from Arabic by Noel Abdulahad.
Pen Circle n° 37 -4-

The Poet and the Fool


A poet is like a fool
The first dances his verse
The second screams his universe
But folly and poetry have a wisdom
Not found in this earthly kingdom
Both meanings differ in sight
But the two persons share the same light
The poet depends on his muse
The fool follows his crazy rules
Each tries to solve an enigma
One in folly,
The other in critical dogma.
۞ ۞ ۞ ۞ ۞ ۞
Great Gaza Goes
Great Gaza goes by me
She cries valleys of blood
Down the bloody hills
Singing a deep sorrow.
“Why this happens to me?”
She asks in her pain.
Maybe, it‟s destiny‟s work
A voice from the unseen world replies.
Killing cowards, who knows?
So conspiring against me
Me,
Moaning
Sweet
Beloved mother!
All wronged me
But my children!
Whom I trust fondly and love.
Hello! This is me again, Gaza.
Can you hear me?
This is my (Hi)story:
Pen Circle n° 37 -5-

A monster lands down on my land


All of a sudden, starts stabbing me
Ravaging me
Raping me
Rocketing me
Torturing me.
Neither she nor I
Could visualize this massive monster
He is too fierce to imagine
Too savage to talk to
Too stupid to castigate
Too sadistic to accept
So satanic!
Like King Lucifer.
“Why this happens to me?” She mourns.
Me, the moaning mother of all these children
O sister Syria
Tearful Tunisia
You‟re not like me
Soon, you shall recover
From this temperamental illness.
Ramadan speaks to Gaza
She feels blessed and bashful
He bestows on her a sweet rhapsody
Drying despair from her glistening eyes
By his nightly prayers to God
And she finds shelter somewhere
Away from these triple-faced folks
Where she‟s with him, alone!
And God their third
The three now delight in Ramadan.
Dr. Rachid ACIM
Pen Circle n° 37 -6-

The Arabian Nights and World Literature:


A Tentative Short Survey
It is quintessentially incontrovertible that the Arabic tales known as
Alf layla wa layla (Thousand and one Nights) have changed the world
literature in a scale that is unprecedented since the eighteenth century
and the translation of Antoine Galland. Fusing the ordinary with the
extraordinary, the supernatural with the mundane, humans with
genies, the Nights represent a wide range of tales deriving from
Baghdad in the mid-eighth century, Persia in the ninth century, and
Cairo in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. More recently, the Iraqi
scholar Muhsin Mahdi mustered considerable textual evidence to
argue that the oldest extant Arabic text of the Nights is the three-
volume Syrian manuscript - now held in the Bibliothèque nationale in
Paris - that would be used by Antoine Galland as the basis of his early
eighteenth-century French translation. This manuscript is considered
as the oldest surviving version of the introductory pages of The
Arabian Nights (Robert Irwin 7). Mahdi‟s English translator, Husain
Haddawy, affirms that this Syrian manuscript is “of all existing
manuscripts the oldest and closest to the original (xii, emphasis
added)”. Endlessly repeated, modified, and rewoven, they derive from
various sources, including almost certainly oral transmission. Indeed,
transmitted orally and collectively, these Arabic tales first introduced
to the European public and transcribed by the French Orientalist,
Antoine Galland into French as Les Mille et une Nuits between 1703-
1814. Ever since 1706, when Galland‟s French version of a
manuscript collection of mainly Persian stories began to appear in
English translation, The Thousand and One Nights had been filtering
through British culture.
Since the first edition at the outset of the eighteenth century, the
ensemble of the editions of the Arabian Nights has been tethered with
illustrations; there are some stories in the collection of the Arabian
Nights which didn‟t figure in pre-Galland Arabic manuscripts. These
stories such as “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” and “Aladdin,” the
Pen Circle n° 37 -7-
adventures of the Caliph Haroun Al-Rashid, are rendered as “orphan
stories”, to use Mia A. Gerhardt‟s own expression (12-14). These
stories owe much of their particular characteristics to the individual
influence of the ostensible translator. The latter does not only
undertake the task of rendering these manuscripts into the target
language, but he also laces these translations with certain illustrations
that just evoke the translator‟s individual perspective about the tales
being translated. For Mahdi, Galland “felt free to abridge, omit, and
change with impunity; remove repetitions at will; amplify the text or
add explanations where he felt readers could benefit; and link the
elements of a story and make it look more logical in the way it moved
from one episode to another” (34).
The Arabian Nights has been present in the literature of the West
since the beginning of the eighteenth century. Irwin maintains that the
world literature is saturated with the Nights imagery, manifesting that
“instead of listing European writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries that were in some way or other influenced by the Nights, it
would be easier to list those that were not” (290). A tremendous
inspiration was conjured up in various areas of creative imagination,
including novel, drama, pantomime, opera, ballet, puppet show,
shadow play, music and painting. Critics have identified its stories in
the work of a wide variety of Western romantic poets and Victorian
novelists, poets, travellers by subsuming it in their works and wrote
about their experiences in reading it, most notably, William Beckford,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Walter Scott, Alfred
Tennyson, W. M. Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell,
Gustave Flaubert, Stendhal, Goethe, Alexander Dumas, Robert Louis
Stevenson and Oscar Wild, just to name but a handful. It also
continued to be praised and admired in the twenty-century by
novelists, playwrights and poets such as Marcel Proust, James Joyce,
W.B. Yeats, Jean Rhys and Angela Carter. More recently, the Nights
has become one of the world‟s great travelling texts, inspiring writers
from Jorge Louis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Salman Rushdie.
Besides, there are some Orientalists and travel writers who write their
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stories in the same manner as those of the Arabian Nights such as
Edward William Lane, the English translator of The Nights (1839-
1841) and Richard Burton (1885-1888). Most of the British travel
writers that I have perused and who sojourned into Morocco made
their accounts abound with some tropes and allusions to the Arabian
Nights, especially belated travellers who travelled to the Land of the
Sunset at the turn of the nineteenth century, searching for the exotic,
the pristine and the atavistic, in an epoch that coincided with the fin de
siècle malaise, the emergence of modernism and the decline of the
exotic.
The reception of the Arabian Nights in the post-Mahfoudian Arabic
nouveau roman has also sparked off the literary imaginations of many
writers in the Arab world. Contemporary Arab novelists draw on the
Nights both from within and from without as these tales returned to
the Arab world, having been absorbed by and repackaged in a new
European form: the novel. These tales have a great influence on a
generation of Arab novelists such as the Palestinian novelist Emile
Habibi, the Lebanese novelists Elias Khoury and Rashid Daif, the
Algerian novelist Rashid Boudjedra, and the Saudi novelist
Abdelrahman Munif, and many others besides.

References
Gerhardt, Mia A. The Art of Story-telling: A Literary Study of the
Thousand and One Nights. Leiden: Brill, 1963.
Haddawy, Husain. The Arabian Nights: Based on the Text of the
Fourteenth Century Syrian Manuscript. Ed. Muhsin Mahdi. New
York: Norton, 1990.
Irwin, Robert. The Arabian Nights: A Companion. London: Tauris
Parke, 2004.
Mahdi, Muhsin, ed. The Thousand and One Nights (Alf layla wa-
layla) from the Earliest Known Sources, 2 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1984.

Elhoussaine AAMMARI
Pen Circle n° 37 -9-

Pen Circle Prize


for Mellali Writers in English
(2015/2016)

Pen Circle opens the annual competition in creative


writing for all students of the Department of English. This
aims at encouraging students to express themselves in
English.
The students who would like to participate in this
competition are required to write an original piece of
writing not exceeding two pages: a short story, an essay, or
any form of creative writing. Participants are kindly
requested to send their attempts to the Journal‟s email
address (pencircle@gmail.com) before January 31,
2016. As it is the case each year, the jury members of this
competition take into consideration the levels (Semesters)
of the candidates so as to give equal chances to all.
Four awards will be given to the winners, each
assigned to a Semester (Semesters 1, 3, and 5, in addition
to a winner chosen among Master Studies‟ students.) The
winners will receive the awards and will have their works
published in the next issue of Pen Circle (N° 38).

Good luck to all!


Pen Circle n° 37 - 10 -

Middle Ground, N° 6 (2014)


Issue N6 (2014) of Middle Ground, International Journal of
Literary and Cultural Encounters has been released by the Research
Laboratory on Culture and Communication. The papers of this issue
deal with the theme of „Occidentalism vs. Orientalism.' The authors
belong to different universities from Morocco, France, Japan, New
Zealand, Poland and Serbia. Below is the list of papers:
From Occidentalism to Orientalism and Beyond
Ian FOOKES
(University of Auckland, New Zealand):
Victor Segalen‟s Exoticism: Beyond Occidentalism and Orientalism.
Michal Moch
(Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland):
Contemporary Polish Discussion on Orientalism and Occidentalism.
Terminology, Main Themes and Controversies
Jacqueline JONDOT
(Université de Toulouse le Mirail, Toulouse, France):
From worship to disappointment: Arab writers in the English
Language and Occidentalism
Barnaby RALPH
(Tokyo Jeshi Daigak University, Japan):
“The Good Old America”: Authenticity, Occidentalism and the Les
Paul in Japan
Occidentalism/Orientalism and the Question of Otherness
Biljana DJORIC FRANCUSKI
(Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, Serbia):
Reversed Roles of the Self and the Other in Occidentalism and
Orientalism
Mohamed RAKII
(Sultan Moulay Slimane University, Beni Mellal – Morocco):
Representing the Christian Occident: A Study of Ahmed Ben Qasim‟s
Kitab Nasir al-Din ala al Qawm al-Kafirin
Pen Circle n° 37 - 11 -
Samira KHEMKHEM
(University of Strasbourg, France):
“Americans in Egyptian Cinema and Cartoons”

Khalid CHAOUCH
(Sultan Moulay Slimane University, Beni Mellal, Morocco):
Claiming Estevanico de Azamor in the Labyrinth of Oriental/Western
Identities
David EWICK
(Tokyo Woman‟s Christian University, Japan)
and Kanae SHIRAISHI
(Hitutsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan):
A Case Study of Self-Orientalism and Self-Occidentalism:
Performative Constructions of Self and Other in Japanese Travel
Guides to Sri Lanka
Moulay Lmustapha MAMAOUI
(Sultan Moulay Slimane University, Beni Mellal – Morocco):
Process of Identification of Alterity in Wyndham Lewis‟s Journey
into Barbary

Middle Ground is an annual and a peer-reviewed international


journal, devoted to researches and studies in literary and cultural
fields. Its scope is open to all periods and genres.
To order a copy of this issue or of previous issues, please contact:
Sultan Moulay Slimane University
Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Department of English
Avenue Ibn Khaldoun, Ouled Hamdane,
B.P 524, 23000, Beni Mellal, Morocco
Fax : 212 0523 48 17 69
E-mail: m_ground@yahoo.com
URL: http://www.flshbm.ma
Pen Circle n° 37 - 12 -

The Research Laboratory on Culture and Communication (RLCC)


Sultan Moulay Slimane University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Department of English Studies, Beni Mellal, Morocco

Call For Papers


Shakespeares: Critical Perspectives Past and Present
RLCC Annual International Conference
29-30 March 2016, Beni Mellal, Morocco
On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death,
the Research Laboratory on Culture and Communication is
devoting its annual international conference to “Shakespeares:
Critical Perspectives Past and Present.” Proposals for 20-minute
papers addressing any aspect of Shakespeare’s oeuvre are invited.
The conference topics include (but are not limited to):
- Popular Culture and Shakespeare
- Multicultural/Global Shakespeare
- Shakespeare in the Arab World
- Postmodern Shakespeare(s)
- Performing/Staging Shakespeare
- Screening Shakespeare
- Cross-gender Shakespeare
- Feminist Shakespeare
- Antiquity in Shakespeare
- Black Shakespeare
- Animals in Shakespeare
- Food Aesthetics in Shakespeare
- Digital Shakespeare(s)
- Popular Music and Shakespeare
- Painting Shakespeare
- The Art of Shakespeare’s Poetry
A selection of papers will be published in the RLCC peer-
reviewed Journal Middle Ground after the conference.
Pen Circle n° 37 - 13 -
Please send proposals of up to 500 words and a short biographical
résumé via e-mail (as Word 1997-2003 attachments) to the
following e-addresses on behalf of the organizing committee:
Khalid Chaouch chaouch63@yahoo.com
Mohamed Sghir Syad syadmohamed1@gmail.com
The deadline for sending proposals is 31st December, 2015.
Acceptance of proposals will be sent on 15th January, 2016.
Conference Fees:
The conference fee is € 50 EUR. / $ 57 USD. / DH 550 MAD. It
includes:
Conference pack
Coffee break refreshment
Farewell dinner
Accommodation:
Hotel El Bassatine***A (within walking distance of the University)
(€50/ $ 57/ MAD550 full board per single person/per night)
Telephone +212 (0) 523 482 247
For more information, please follow the links:
https://www.hotelsclick.com/auberges/maroc/beni-mellal/48438/hotel-
al-bassatine.html
http://en.directrooms.com/hotels/subregion/4-68-3494/
Airports
Menara Marrakesh Airport (3hours drive/taxi ride to the Hotel in Beni
Mellal)
Mohamed V Casablanca Airport (3hours drive/taxi ride to the Hotel in
Beni Mellal)
Hotel reservations and rides from airport to Beni Mellal can be made
by the organizers upon request.
The Organising Committee:
Khalid Chaouch
Cherki Karkaba
Moulay Mustapha Mamaoui
Mohamed Rakii
Mohamed Sghir Syad
Pen Circle n° 37 - 14 -

Pungent Quotations on
Fools, Insanity and Madness
"There comes a moment in everybody‟s life when he must decide whether he‟ll
live among human beings or not – a fool among fools or a fool alone."
Thornton Wilder, The Matchmaker.
“A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond
the point reached by the genius of the last generation.”
Max Gluckman, Politics, Law and Ritual.
"Insanity is a kind of innocence."
Graham Greene, The Quiet American
"If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise."
William Blake
"The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman
to manage a fool."
Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills.
"The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool."
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
"There a pleasure sure
In being mad, which none but mad men know."
Dryden, The Spanish Friar.
"As soon as he ceased to be mad he became merely stupid. There are maladies
we must not seek to cure because they alone protect us from others that are more
serious."
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way.
“Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few.”
Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
“What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.”
Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
Clues to ‘CROSSWORDS’ N° 36
A B C D E F G H I J K
1 A M A T E U R I S H
2 B E M O A N B E E P
3 O N O R I E N T A L
4 R A N T V A V A
5 T G H E V E Y N
6 E C B R E A D T
7 P R O C E S S O M
8 S I M P L E T N I M
9 Y E P L H A S A
10 C O S H U T T E R
11 H S A E R R O R S
12 E L E M E N T A R Y
Pen Circle n° 37 - 15 -

CROSSWORDS (N° 37)


1- Natives of Britain – To make or become a unity. 2- To give a
name once again – An indefinite article. 3- Establishment or
Foundation. 4- Object, animal, or plant symbolizing a tribe or a clan,
often having ritual associations (Reversed) – A vegetable often used
with tomato in Moroccan salad. 5- To draft or compose (past form) –
An indefinite article – Spanish TV Channel. 6- The sensation that
precedes vomiting – A person who often states falsehoods. 7- The
rudiments of a subject or an alphabetical guide – To build castles in
Spain – A Spanish greeting. 8- Very Large Telescope – Fibre or
thread used in weaving or knitting. 9- Find it in „faery’ – A castrated
male of domesticated cattle used for work and meat – A Chinese name
– Egoistic objective pronoun. 10- Momentous, significant, notable.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
A- The upper rim of a vessel or a cup – Relating to a navy. B-
Something that can be renewed. C- To teach. D- Design made on the
skin by inking (pl.) – Football team of Marseilles. E- Excluded,
eliminated – Extreme programming. F- Network or web – Aural
organs. G- An international organization – Coordinating conjunction
that joins two or more alternatives. H- Preposition used to indicate
position – An adverb meaning „from here‟ or „from home‟. I- The “…
Jack” is the national flag of GB – Language of the Maya people. J-
Preposition – To leg it. K- The process of igniting the fuel in an
engine. L- Having the shape of an ellipse. M- Absolved or relieved
from an obligation.
Pen Circle n° 37 - 16 -

Sultan Moulay Slimane University


Faculty of Letters and Humanities
Department of English
Filière of English Studies
Beni Mellal - Morocco

M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M7

Semester
Reading Languages I:
1 Comprehension Paragraph Grammar Spoken Guided Study
and Précis 1 Writing 1 English Reading Skills French

M15 M16 M17 M18 M19 M20

Semester British
Public Culture
3 Extensive Composition 2 Grammar Speaking and Society Initiation
Reading 3 and / Culture to
Debating and Society Translation
in the US

Semester M27 M28 M29 M30 M31 M32


5
Literary
&
Cultural Novel 1 Drama Media Applied Travel Translation &
Studies Linguistics Narrative Interpretation
Studies
Stream

M27 M28 M29 M30 M31 M32


Semester
5
Novel Phonetics & Morpho- Applied Sociolinguistics Translation &
Linguistics Phonology Syntax 1 Linguistics Interpretation
Stream

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