for humanities sciences al qadisiya

Abstract

Pygmalion is originally a myth of Cyprus who is a great sculpture. This artist is a misogynist or at least dissatisfied with all the women of Cyprus so he remains a bachelor. He dreams of a perfect woman so he sculptures a marble woman who has been so beautiful that he prays to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, to find him a wife as lovely as his statue. Feeling pity for Pygmalion, Aphrodite transforms the lifeless statue into a real woman whom Pygmalion marries.Thus, the keynote for the myth itself and almost the whole later works inspired by this myth is the transformation that takes place to the female character whether a statue or a woman. In the myth, the divine power of the goddess transforms the cold ivory into a warm, living woman. In the other works, transformation is also applicable because a naïve girl is transformed into a lady with different speech, behaviour, attitude, and knowledge. This myth has had a long and various literary adaptations beginning with the Roman Ovid's Metamorphoses to John Marston's The Metamorphosis of Pygmalion's Image (1598), Thomas L. Beddoes' Pygmalion (1825), and W.S. Gilbert's Pygmalion and Galatea (1871). (1)This same myth has inspired the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw ( 1856-1950) whose Pygmalion (1912) reflects his dramatic genius because the ancient myth has been developed, almost out of recognition, into a lifelike and modern play. Furthermore, among other adaptations of the myth, Shaw's Pygmalion is the most widespread and memorable play. Moreover, one of the most famous Egyptian dramatists inspired by this myth is Tawfiq Al-Hakim (1898-1987). Interestingly, this influential Arab playwright and writer is known to be a misogynist in his early years remaining a bachelor for an unusually long period of time. He is given the epithet "Enemy of Woman". This is probably one of the primary causes that attracts his attention to the myth but his play Pygmalion (1942), unlike Shaw's Pygmalion which has a realistic approach, deals with the myth from philosophical, psychological, and metaphysical points of view.(2) This paper examines the two approaches of Shaw and Al-Hakim to see how these dramatists apply the motif "transformation" in a way that serves the dramatic purpose of each.