Abstract

Representing mental illness in literary texts has, recently, been loaded with common psychological knowledge. This puts burdens on literary texts which represent such cases, making epistemological limits to the process of representation. On the other hand, these texts are confined by the limitations of their genre (short story and drama) and by the narrative modes available to these genres. This article attempts to investigate the ability of each narrative genre and mode (diegesis and mimesis) to work under such epistemological limits and hence their ability to represent semi-clinical versions of some psychological cases. Sayeda and Karima are two psychological cases represented in Salwa Bakr’s short stories “Such a Beautiful Voice” and “Thirty-One Trees,” which are later adapted to the American theatre by Yussef El Guindi. This paper takes these two narratives and their theatrical adaptation as a study case, investigating the difference between the two writers, Bakr (as a short story writer) and Elgiundi (as a dramatist), in their appeal to use diegetic or mimetic modes of narration; and how these modes help, or limit, the process of representation. Moreover, this paper, attempts to answer the following questions: how diegetic mode of narration can be different from mimetic mode in representing these psychological cases? What are the limitations encountered, or the opportunities offered, by diegetic and mimetic representations of mental illnesses?