application/pdf (9783284 bytes) Censi, Martina (Editor) ita ara Saʻd Allāh Wannūs. Rituals of Signs and Transformations. Syrian drama. Arabic theatre. Committed theatre. Una dama dell’alta società che diventa prostituta, un capo dei notabili libertino che imbocca la via del sufismo, uno sgherro della città che si dichiara omosessuale. Sono le ‘metamorfosi’ che stravolgono i personaggi di quest’opera teatrale, nella Damasco del XIX secolo. Per la prima volta in traduzione italiana, Rituali di segni e metamorfosi di Saʿd Allāh Wannūs (1941-1997), uno dei maggiori esponenti del teatro arabo contemporaneo, celebra la portata rivoluzionaria del desiderio, in grado di sovvertire non soltanto l’identità individuale – mostrandone l’intima instabilità – ma la società nel suo complesso. Testo arabo a fronte. Ṭuqūs al-išārāt wa-l-taḥawwulāt (Rituals of Signs and Transformations), published in 1994, is a play which can be attributed to the last phase of Saʿd Allāh Wannūs’s literary production. At this stage, the Syrian author’s political commitment is no longer expressed through the interest for the collective dimension, but it focuses on the individual, considered as a pivotal element for social change. In Ṭuqūs, Saʿd Allāh Wannūs revisits history from an individual point of view, fragmenting it into a multiplicity of micro-narratives. During the 1880s in Damascus, the muftī, the chief religious legal authority, and the leader of the ašrāf, the descendants of the Prophet, are involved in a feud that splits the city into factions and brings it on the verge of anarchy. When the chief of police arrests the leader of the ašrāf while he is engaged in lovemaking with his mistress in his semi-private garden, the muftī concocts a scheme to save his enemy’s reputation, but his real aim is to subdue him and get rid of him. This event triggers a series of transformations involving the identities of the characters. Thus, the leader of the ašrāf, a regular of prostitutes and assiduous drinker, suddenly becomes a mystic with ascetic ambitions, while the upright muftī loses his head for a high-ranking woman who leaves her respectable life to become a prostitute. The whole society is destabilized by the desires of the characters. Desire not only affects their individual identity, but it also exerts influence on their social position, undermining a system of norms based on hypocrisy and on the division between the ‘latent’ and the ‘manifest’. hdl:11168/11.452349 https://phaidra.cab.unipd.it/o:452349 http://phaidra.cab.unipd.it/o:432595 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode 2020 Saʻd Allāh Wannūs, Rituali di segni e metamorfosi. Venezia, Edizioni Ca' Foscari - Digital Publishing, 2020-12-21, 308 p. https://polovea.sebina.it/SebinaOpac/resource/rituali-di-segni-e-metamorfosi-tuqus-alisarat-waltahawwulat/VEA3068317 PDFDocument Saʻd Allāh Wannūs Edizioni Ca' Foscari - Digital Publishing PHAIDRA University of Padua Rituali di segni e metamorfosi. Ṭuqūs al-išārāt wa-l-taḥawwulāt