Parole di teatro, parole di mawwāl: la riscrittura della tradizione popolare egiziana nella lingua drammaturgica di Najīb Surūr

“Mawwāl on stage”: Nagˇīb Surūr’s theatre and the re-writing of Egyptian folk heritage Employing a methodology which gathers the traditional Arabic rhetoric-grounded tools of analysis, cross-temporal sources on ethnopoetics and Arabic folk literature, this paper focuses on mawwāl’s revival (Egyptian traditional folksong) within Nagˇīb Surūr’s (1932-1978 ) experimental dramaturgical production. In particular, providing a brief philological overview on mawwāl’s challenging origin and evolution, this study argues how an Arabic linguistically/rhetorically grounded approach to the little explored mawwāl’s structure and subjects, not only enhances how it is clearly based on rhetorical patterns, but also enable us to reconstruct a more organic criticism on Surūr’s conscious attempt at broadcasting an innovative form of playwriting within the framework of innovations provided by the Sixties and Seventies’ generation of Egyptian authors.