Form and History in Modern Arabic Poetics

Author(s):  
Huda Fakhreddine

Modern Arabic poetic forms developed in conversation with the rich Arabic poetic tradition, on one hand, and the Western literary traditions, primarily English and French, on the other. In light of the drastic social and political changes that swept the Arab world in the first half of the 20th century, Western influences often appear in the scholarship on the period to be more prevalent and operative in the rise of the modernist movement. Nevertheless, one of the fundamental forces that drove the movement from its early phases is its urgent preoccupation with the Arabic poetic heritage and its investment in forging a new relationship with the literary past. The history of poetic forms in the first half of the 20th century reveals much about the dynamics between margin and center, old and new, commitment and escapism, autochthonous and outside imperatives. Arabic poetry in the 20th century reflects the political and social upheavals in Arab life. The poetic forms which emerged between the late 1940s and early 1960s presented themselves as aesthetically and ideologically revolutionary. The modernist poets were committed to a project of change in the poem and beyond. Developments from the qas̩īdah of the late 19th century to the prose poem of the 1960s and the notion of writing (kitābah) after that suggest an increased loosening or abandoning of formal restrictions. However, the contending poetic proposals, from the most formal to the most experimental, all continue to coexist in the Arabic poetic landscape in the 21st century. The tensions and negotiations between them are what often lead to the most creative poetic breakthroughs.

This book is devoted to the life and academic legacy of Mustafa Badawi who transformed the study of modern Arabic literature in the second half of the twentieth century. Prior to the 1960s the study of Arabic literature, both classical and modern, had barely been emancipated from the academic approaches of orientalism. The appointment of Badawi as Oxford University's first lecturer in modern Arabic literature changed the face of this subject as Badawi showed, through his teaching and research, that Arabic literature was making vibrant contributions to global culture and thought. Part biography, part collection of critical essays, this book celebrates Badawi's immense contribution to the field and explores his role as a public intellectual in the Arab world and the west.


Author(s):  
Rebecca C. Johnson

Zaynab, first published in 1913, is widely cited as the first Arabic novel, yet the previous eight decades saw hundreds of novels translated into Arabic from English and French. This vast literary corpus influenced generations of Arab writers but has, until now, been considered a curious footnote in the genre's history. Incorporating these works into the history of the Arabic novel, this book offers a transformative new account of modern Arabic literature, world literature, and the novel. This book rewrites the history of the global circulation of the novel by moving Arabic literature from the margins of comparative literature to its center. Considering the wide range of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century translation practices, the book argues that Arabic translators did far more than copy European works; they authored new versions of them, producing sophisticated theorizations of the genre. These translations and the reading practices they precipitated form the conceptual and practical foundations of Arab literary modernity, necessitating an overhaul of our notions of translation, cultural exchange, and the global. The book shows how translators theorized the Arab world not as Europe's periphery but as an alternative center in a globalized network. It affirms the central place of (mis)translation in both the history of the novel in Arabic and the novel as a transnational form itself.


Author(s):  
Luidmila Pastushenko

The article presents the first attempt of a complete and systematic analysis of historic and theological publications of teachers and pupils of the Kyiv Theological Academy in the second half of the 19th – beginning of 20th century in the field of studying the history of relations of Catholicism and Protestantism with Orthodox on the Ukrainian lands. The specifics of Kyiv academic historians studies was determined by the social and-political circumstances in the middle of the 19th century and denoted by an attempt to comprehend this issue in the perspective of the history of interconfessional relations of two Western Christian traditions with the eastern tradition of Orthodoxy in the historical gap of the 16th – 17th centuries – the period of the largest confrontation in confessional relations in Ukraine. The author clarifies the characteristic features of researching the question of inter-confessional interaction in the 15th – 17th centuries, which are expressed in attempts to describe the coexistence of three denominations as multidimensional and provoking а variety of different interpretations. Historical studies present the attempt to show confessional interaction in the political and legal aspects and to provide historical interpretations to the ground of philosophy of history. The article proves the tendency of Kyiv academic researchers to move away from the established Russian historiography of the 19th century view at confessional relations in Ukraine through the prism of hard confrontation and outline in religious life Ukraine conditions and circumstances of inter-confessional dialogue. Also, historians in their studies repeatedly note the significant educational and outlook influence of Western Christian denominations on the formation of educational, cultural, theological, literary traditions in Ukraine.


1986 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Jörg Heusser

Since the 1960s AICA, the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art, has been increasingly concerned with the primary resources on which research depends. In particular, access to archival material was felt to be necessary in order to counter a dominant, highly selective, ‘modernist’ interpretation of 20th century art, with a more objective, comprehensive, and thoroughly researched history of the period covering all countries. The AICARC-Bulletin, founded in 1974, is devoted to primary sources, archives and documentation centres, archival techniques, and the ‘documentary’ approach to art, in relation to the art of this century.


Author(s):  
Daniel Alex Richter

Cinema began in Uruguay with the exhibition of foreign films by visiting representatives of the Lumière brothers in 1896 before the first Uruguayan film was produced and shown in 1898. From the early period of Uruguayan cinema to the end of the 20th century, Uruguayan national cinema struggled to exist in the estimation of critical observers. Considering these periods of growth and stagnation, this history of Uruguayan cinema seeks to shed light on the industry’s evolution by focusing on exhibition, production, and spectatorship. This essay explores Uruguay’s national film productions, transnational businesses in shaping local film exhibition, the growth of mass publics and critical spectatorship, and the significance of political filmmaking in understanding the evolution of Latin American cinema during the 1960s. The history of Uruguayan cinema during the 20th century also provides a lens for understanding the political, social, and cultural histories of a country that has struggled to live up to its reputation as South America’s “most democratic” nation.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 510-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fouad Jabir Kadhem al-Zurfi

The Arab world today is encountering a destructive resurgence of sectarianism, which, up to a few years ago, had been confined to books and rhetorical debates. In the first half of the 20th century, Iraqi sociologist Ali Al-Wardi pioneered the critique of sectarianism in the Arab world. Unlike others, he approached the issue from a specific and unique perspective. His observations of Iraqi history were made from a sociological standpoint that aimed at revealing the impact of sectarianism on Iraqi politics. Al-Wardi's writings were carried out to two phases: the first extends from the early 1950s to the early 1960s; and the second covers the period between the publication of his two books, Study on the Nature of Iraqi Society (the year of publication is unknown) and Social Briefs from the Modern History of Iraq (1971). The first phase focused on Islam's heritage and a number of social phenomena; the second focused exclusively on the study of Iraqi society. A number of factors influenced Al-Wardi's personality and thinking, a fact especially evident in the kind of methodology he used, which was new when addressing the sectarian issue. Based on Al-Wardi's research, this paper traces the historical factors and process that affected the historical development of the divisions separating two main sects of Islam – Shi'a and Sunni – resulting in a duel between them, which led to the configuration of Iraqi society along sectarian lines. It elaborates on the methodology used by Al-Wardi in his studies of Iraqi society, as well as his attitude with regard to sectarianism in modern Iraq. It also explores the intellectual and political influences that helped shape his thinking in this domain and its legacy on sociological thought in the Arab world.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 194-210
Author(s):  
Adriano V. Rossi

Abstract Resorting to personal memories from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the author, who defended in 1971 at the University of Rome a thesis entitled Iranian Elements in Brahui, under Prof. Bausani’s direction (later revised and published under the title Iranian lexical elements in Brāhūī [Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1979]), reconstructs the political and cultural climate in which – at the end of the 1970s – a major subject of enquiry was the problem of the nature of the national unity among the countries of the Arab world. At the urging of Biancamaria Scarcia, Bausani decided to publish at the Institute of Islamic Studies of the University of Rome a volume of historical and linguistic essays coordinated by himself and B. Scarcia (Mondo islamico tra interazione e acculturazione [Roma: Istituto di studi islamici, 1981]). In this volume, Bausani published an essay on the concept of ‘Islamic language’ that took stock of his previous proposals made over more than twenty years (starting with his speech at the 1966 Ravello conference on a comparative history of the Islamic literatures). The author demonstrates that notwithstanding his use of linguistic terminology, Bausani’s main interest has always been the investigation of the possibility of identifying minimum distinctive traits present in the different literary typologies of various countries of Islamic culture.


2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Zelko

Abstract Human attitudes to various nonhuman animals have varied considerably across cultures and throughout time. While some of our responses are undoubtedly instinctive and universal—a visceral fear of large carnivores or the feeling of spontaneous warmth for creatures exhibiting high degrees of neoteny—it is clear that our attitude toward specific species is largely shaped by our innate anthropomorphism: that is, when we think about animals, we are also thinking about ourselves. There are few better examples of this than the shifting attitudes toward whales and dolphins throughout the 20th century, particularly among citizens of Western democracies. This article narrates the cultural history of this development and demonstrates how the current enchantment with whales and dolphins is primarily the result of two broad—and related—cultural developments: the modern entertainment complex, particularly cinema, television, and aquatic theme parks; and the 1960s counterculture, with its potent blend of holistic ecology, speculative neuroscience, and mysticism. The result was the creation of what we might think of as the “metaphysical whale,” a creature who has inspired the abolitionist stance toward whaling.


2021 ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Vasily A. Kuznetsov

On April 23, 2021, an outstanding Russian Arabist, Doctor of History, Principal Fellow of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Bagrat Garegionovich Seyranyan celebrated his 90th birthday. His works on the recent history of Egypt and Yemen and the general problems of the socio-political development of the Arab countries in the 20th century have long become classic. Many of them were translated into Arabic and received well-deserved recognition abroad, and such books as “Egypt in the Struggle for Independence, 1945–1952” (Moscow, 1970) and “Evolution of the Social Structure of the Countries of the Arab East. Land Aristocracy in the 19th Century – the 60s of the 20th Century” (Moscow, 1991) entered the golden fund of world academy. The contribution of Bagrat Seyranyan to the training of new generations of orientalists is colossal. Under his leadership there were prepared more than 40 Ph.D. theses, he participated in authoring of numerous textbooks and teaching materials on the history of the Arab world. In this paper friends, colleagues and students address the hero of the day with words of recognition and gratitude.


Author(s):  
Dirkie Smit

In this contribution the seemingly straightforward slogan espoused by Biblica, namely, “Transforming lives through God’s Word” is complicated by placing it within the context of the rich, multi-layered and complex history of Bible-reading. Fully aware that it is an impossible task to construe the history of the reading of the Bible, offers a few broad strokes describing Biblical reception and interpretation, beginning with the complex genesis of the Bible, extending through the Early Church, the Middle Ages, The Renaissance and Reformation, the time of Enlightenment and rise of Modernity, the emergence of ecumenical hermeneutics in the 20th century, and the contemporary conflicts in hermeneutic perspectives. Throughout the essay, the question is asked – in various ways and with different responses – what “Transforming lives through God’s Word” could mean.


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