“Be Silent in that Solitude”: Women and the Subversion of Silence in Surah “Al-Mujadilah” and Poe’s “Ligeia”

ABSTRACT This essay probes the notion of silence and women’s acoustic subversion in Surah “Al-Mujādilah” in the Holy Qurʾān and Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ligeia.” In the Islamic tradition and Poe’s literary texts, women’s voices and subjectivity are limited due to their conventional, hermeneutical association with the presumed hidden fear of corruption and violation in androcentric societies. The essay not only points to the Qurʾānic influence on Poe’s treatment of women as silent and submissive, but also seeks to position Poe’s female characters in relation to the Qurʾānic model of subversive femininity. Within both narratives, women are traditionally designated to play specific role models that seem to idealize them as passive linguistic constructs in their communities. The essay, however, reconsiders the orthodox patriarchal representation of women in the Qurʾānic chapter and Poe’s text and rather suggests a rereading of their silence as a subversive speech-act whereby they question and reevaluate the ontological tendency to view them as acoustic objects to male authority.

[1]  E. Poe The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe , 1992 .

[2]  Z. Shah Anthropomorphic Depictions of God: The Concept of God in Judaic, Christian, and Islamic Traditions: Representing the Unrepresentable , 2012 .

[3]  J. Berman American Arabesque: Arabs and Islam in the Nineteenth Century Imaginary , 2012 .

[4]  Jeffrey Einboden The Early American Qur'an: Islamic Scripture and US Canon , 2009 .

[5]  Asma Lamrabet Women in the Qur'an: An Emancipatory Reading , 2016 .

[6]  J. Webb Fantastic Desire: Poe, Calvino, and the Dying Woman , 2011 .

[7]  Gisela Webb,et al.  Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective , 2001, Journal of Law and Religion.

[8]  Joseph J. Moldenhauer Murder as a Fine Art: Basic Connections Between Poe's Aesthetics, Psychology, and Moral Vision , 1968, PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America.

[9]  N. Denzin Interpretive Ethnography: Ethnographic Practices for the 21st Century , 1996 .

[10]  W. Crisman Poe’s Ligeia and Helen of Troy , 2005 .

[11]  Huw Thomas Planning in Ten Words or Less. A Lacanian Entanglement with Spatial Planning , 2010 .

[12]  Joan Dayan,et al.  Amorous bondage : Poe, ladies and slaves , 1994 .

[13]  T. J. Matheson The Multiple Murders in “Ligeia”: A New Look at Poe’s Narrator , 1982 .

[14]  Edgar Allan Poe Complete Tales and Poems , 2015 .

[15]  Bruce Fink,et al.  The Lacanian Subject , 1996 .

[16]  E. Lawson For the believing women , 2004 .

[17]  Leland S. Person Aesthetic Headaches: Women and a Masculine Poetics in Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne , 1988 .

[18]  Robin B. Wright Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World , 2011 .

[19]  L. Cecil Poe's "Arabesque" , 1966 .

[20]  W. Ong,et al.  Orality and literacy : the technologizing of the word , 1982 .

[21]  Brandon R. Schrand Works Cited , 1991, Bach's Cycle, Mozart's Arrow.

[22]  D. Spellberg Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders , 2013 .

[23]  A. Quinn,et al.  Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. , 1942 .

[24]  D. Lawrence Studies in Classic American Literature , 1923 .

[25]  Washington Irving Mahomet and His Successors , 1849 .