The documentary discourse in the novel “The Great Madness” by the Zionist writer Avicdor Hamiri

Abstract

This research aims to define the documentary discourse analysis in the novel "The Great Madness" by the jewish writer Avikdor Hamiri, which is one of the first novels within this literary genre, whether at the level of world literature or modern Hebrew literature. This new type of novel appeared after the First World War; It has received wide resonance in the international literary circles; This is a result of documenting the remnants of the war of destruction, devastation and millions of victims. This type of novel is based on documentation and historical fiction. This research is divided into two chapters, the first chapter dealt with "the concept of documentation", "the history of the documentary novel", and "the biography of the writer".As for the second chapter, the research defines and analyzes the novel and the role of the discourse of documentation in its selection and then discusses its social dimension, and explains that the social events that preceded the outbreak of the First World War, which were dominant over society, such as the discourse of preparation for war and revenge against enemies and colonialism.

In the analysis of the novel, the impact of the dominant discourse, which is the discourse of war, appeared in the formation of wrong and even dangerous social trends among people, starting with the emergence of encouraging currents to wage war and educating people to prepare for it, ending with throwing innocent citizens into war and death. The researcher reached a conclusion that the writer Avikdor Hamiri is the first to write this type of novel, and thus preceded the writers Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, John Berendt and Don DeLillo in this field.