الفهرس 
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Abstract
This dissertation aims at comparatively analyzing selected works from World War II and the War on Iraq in an attempt to trace the poetics of witness and survival in the poetic expressions of these two historic events. World War II and the War on Iraq have both been linked in the narrative and rhetoric leading to the latter. The consequences of both being expansive, this dissertation tries to discuss selected poems by Anna Akhmatova, Czeslaw Milosz and a number of Iraqi poets to show the extent to which Witness Poetry might be considered one of the most expressive modes of writing and reading about the traumatic experience of war these various poets have witnessed. It also highlights the ways in which the abovementioned poets reacted to war and the extent to which their poetry was a means of survival and eventually reconstructing their own reality. These poets, having survived war and turmoil in their respective countries, present a decentralized narrative that offers a different viewpoint from the mainstream and official narratives of the wars. To this end, it is important to view these poems in the light of not only the background against which they were written, but also through examining the kind of narrative they attempted to challenge.
This dissertation tries to address these main questions: 1) What is Witness Poetry? 2) How can Witness Poetry be connected to the theories of Trauma and Memory? 3) Historically, how are the Russian, Polish and Iraqi experiences similar? 4) How did Witness Poetry written during both World War II and the War on Iraq navigate the reality of the war? 5) How was the notion of trauma and memory depicted in the selected poems discussed?
To answer these questions, I rely on Carolyn Forche’s definition of Witness Poetry as such reading of these poems from the lens of Witness Poetry highlights new aspects of the poets’ contributions that were not addressed in previous studies. With regards to the notion of trauma and memory, I build on the work of Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, Dori Laub, Dominick LaCapra and Maurice Halbwachs to discuss the relationship between trauma, memory and war.
I contribute to the field of comparative studies by bringing together works from Russia, Poland and Iraq in an attempt to study the connection between both World War II and the War on Iraq, which to the researcher’s knowledge, has not been attempted before.