The article investigates Abd al-Rahmàn al-Abnudi’s al-Midàn (the Square), the celebrated poem in Egyptian colloquial Arabic dedicated to the Egyptian young people who occupied the central Midàn al-Tahrir (Tahrir Square or Liberation Square) in Cairo on 25th June 2011 paving the way to the revolution. The poem, written during the very first days of the uprising, is analysed in the context of the major transformations happening in the Egyptian literary filed during the decade 2001/2011. In this period the state’s cultural institutions lost much of their traditional power to exert authority over the contents of the literary production and its circulation among the reading public. One of the most outstanding features of these transformations, is represented by the role of internet as a means of circulation and fruition of literary texts especially through blogs and YouTube. The article considers several versions of al-Midàn uploaded on YouTube and highlights the process by which the poem was transformed by each user in a (re)newed multimodal text, where different semiotic resources interact: the reading of the poem, the video images, and (if present) the soundtrack. These videos have been viewed and commented by hundreds of thousands of YouTube users in the weeks following the writing of the poem and have given a decisive contribution to the shaping of the revolution collective imaginary.
Le poesie della rivoluzione egiziana e la loro riproduzione come testi multimodali in YouTube: al-Midàn (La Piazza) di Abd al-Rahmàn al-Abnudi
CASINI, Lorenzo
2012-01-01
Abstract
The article investigates Abd al-Rahmàn al-Abnudi’s al-Midàn (the Square), the celebrated poem in Egyptian colloquial Arabic dedicated to the Egyptian young people who occupied the central Midàn al-Tahrir (Tahrir Square or Liberation Square) in Cairo on 25th June 2011 paving the way to the revolution. The poem, written during the very first days of the uprising, is analysed in the context of the major transformations happening in the Egyptian literary filed during the decade 2001/2011. In this period the state’s cultural institutions lost much of their traditional power to exert authority over the contents of the literary production and its circulation among the reading public. One of the most outstanding features of these transformations, is represented by the role of internet as a means of circulation and fruition of literary texts especially through blogs and YouTube. The article considers several versions of al-Midàn uploaded on YouTube and highlights the process by which the poem was transformed by each user in a (re)newed multimodal text, where different semiotic resources interact: the reading of the poem, the video images, and (if present) the soundtrack. These videos have been viewed and commented by hundreds of thousands of YouTube users in the weeks following the writing of the poem and have given a decisive contribution to the shaping of the revolution collective imaginary.Pubblicazioni consigliate
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