Framing the Narrative of the Omani Novel Sayyidat Al-Qamar in Arabic and English: A Cross-Examination of Reviews and Paratexts

This thesis investigates the paratextual (re)framing and (re)narrating of Gulf literature through examining the converging and diverging ideological stances of translation actors, taking the Omani novelist Jokha Alharthi’s Sayyidat Al- qamar and its English translation, Celestial Bodies, as a case study. Drawing on Genette’s model of paratexts, narrative and reframing theory, this thesis examines the ways in which personal narratives of the novel among source and target text readers intersect with or differ from the narratives constructed by translation agents individually and collectively through paratextual framing. The study consists of two stages: it starts with examining the reception of both the Arabic and English texts by analyzing the readers’ reviews on Goodreads; it then moves on to examine the paratexts of the Arabic novel and its English translation. This study aims at raising awareness of the power of the paratext in literary translation in framing narratives about the source culture and on the role of the translation actors (translation consumers included) to resist orientalist representation of one’s and other’s culture. Through addressing the different narratives constructed by translation actors in the source and target context (source or target), this study shows how the personal narratives of readers in each context differ significantly in the ways in which they frame the novel, yet they tend to overlap with the narratives framed by the paratextual elements, showing the power of paratexts in shaping reception.