التناصّ الذاتيّ وتحوّلات المجتمع الخليجيّ في مسرحيّة "ريحة الهيل" للكاتب القطريّ عبد الرحمن المنّاعي

Abstract

This study explores the theme of self-intertextuality in relation to the transformations of the Arab Gulf society in the play Rīḥat al-Hail [The Smell of Cardium] by the Qatari playwright Abdulrahman Al-Mannai. Here, self-intertextuality emerges as a re-articulation of personal experience within an artistic framework that intertwines the personal with the collective. This is manifested in Al-Mannai’s evocation of popular memory, the symbolic retrieval of Qatari cultural elements, and their deployment within a critical discourse that interrogates a rapidly shifting present. The study further reveals how the play reshapes Gulf dramaturgy through symbolic compression, orality-infused narrative techniques, folk storytelling, and introspective dialogue. As such, the dramatic text becomes a reflective arena in which the authorial self-negotiates its position vis-à-vis its social environment.

The research concludes that Rīḥat al-Hail [The Smell of Cardium] is a dramatic work that internalises the Arab Gulf’s sociocultural reality, serving as an artistic model that captures the tension between personal memory and collective transformation—particularly within Qatari society. It also shows how Al-Mannai revisits the anxieties addressed in his earlier works, Umm al-Zein and Maqāmāt Ibn Baḥr, specifically the erosion of traditional relations under the pressures of urbanisation and cultural alienation, thereby affirming the continuity of his critical theatrical project.