Setting of the Desert Era and Dawn of the Oil Age in the Work of Blind Poets in Arab Gulf Countries: Ṣaqr Al-Shabīb as an Example

Abstract

This paper seeks to fill a gap in research on the ingenuity and imagery of blind poets in Gulf societies before and after oil, by looking closely at the case of Kuwaiti poet Ṣaqr Al-Shabīb (1894-1963). The hypothesis upon which this paper is based, states that Al-Shabīb underwent three crises in his life: poverty, blindness, and a trauma with the advent of early modernization in Kuwait and the entry of the oil age in record time. Based on this hypothesis, this paper will be divided into three axes. The first sheds light on Al-Shabīb’s suffering from poverty and blindness. The second, according to the semiotic approach, examines the influence of the pre-oil environment on shaping the poetic images of Al-Shabīb, and his unique ability to document the Kuwaiti environment during the pre-oil era despite his visual impairment. The third explores the signs of the rapid transformation in the Kuwaiti environment that accompanied the age of oil, and how the poet harnessed all of his senses in portraying and documenting that transformation uniquely, as well as his own stance with regard to that transformation. It is also worth pointing out that this paper is an integral part of my upcoming thesis: “The Influence of Oil in the Work of Blind Poets in Arab Gulf Countries: Semiotic and Psychological Perspectives.”