Anthologizing Arabic Literature

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 512-526
Author(s):  
Omar Khalifah
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Literature Anthologies

This paper examines the ways in which Arabic literature has been introduced into world literature anthologies. Taking The Longman Anthology of World Literature as a case study, the paper questions the politics of the inclusions and exclusions of Arabic literature in the anthology. Pertinent to the discussion is to ponder the nature of Arabic literature that “makes it” into the anthology. In addition, the paper will demonstrate how the anthology in fact obscures, rather than illuminates, major historical trajectories of Arabic literature. The complexity of Arabic literature, its highly self-reflexive texts, and its internal developments throughout history beg for a different approach that, I argue, this world literature anthology is lacking. Equally significant, The Longman recycles several common orientalist clichés about Arabic literature, the most important of which is that there is no Arabic literature worthy of inclusion in the three volumes of the anthology spanning the thirteenth-nineteenth centuries. As for the pieces that are included, the paper will reflect on the size and space they are offered, arguing that these are not arbitrary choices, but rather indicative of how a non-Western literary tradition is appropriated into a world literature anthology.

Stranger Fictions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca C. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Global Circulation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Arabic

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.

A Thousand and One Nights and the Novel

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard van Leeuwen
Keyword(s):  
Magical Realism ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Modern Arabic

This chapter examines the influence of Alf layla wa layla (A Thousand and One Nights), the ingenious Arabic cycle of stories, on the development of the novel as a literary genre. It shows that the Nights helped shape the European novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The chapter first explains how the French translation of the Nights and its popularity in Europe led to its incorporation in world literature, creating an enduring taste for “Orientalism” in many forms. It then considers how the Nights became integrated in modern Arabic literature and how Arabic novels inspired by it were used to criticize social conditions, dictatorial authority, and the lack of freedom of expression. It also discusses the Nights as a source of innovation for the trend of magical realism, as well as its role in the interaction between the Arab world and the West.

scholarly journals How the people acquire language?: A case study on Virendra Language acquisition

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Tatu Zakiyatun Nufus ◽  
Atik Yuliani
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Early Age ◽  
Know How ◽  
The People ◽  
Formal School ◽  
Descriptive Method ◽  
Share Information

The language acquisition process can be seen as a running parallel throughout a child’s life every day, it happened for every human who interacts with other people to share information since they were a child. It looks closely at the acquisition of the early age of Virendra, he was a child under 5 age who lives in the Sundanese environment and he is not familiar with English as a foreign language. Virendra was familiar with Arabic literature previously in his house, and he knows English in the formal school of his Playgroup up to now in kindergarten, the writer tried to report this case using a descriptive method. The data is collected while he was used the language in the school and how his parents influence his language acquisition in the house. And it is conducted to know how well Virendra’s comprehension in producing language. Beside it, this study is expected to the parents to lead the child in using language.

Muhammad Mustafa Badawi in Conversation

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul-Nabi Isstaif
Keyword(s):  
Early Life ◽  
World Literature ◽  
English Language ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Literature And Politics ◽  
The Family ◽  
Essential Questions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This chapter presents a 1997 interview with Mustafa Badawi and includes sections relating to his early life and education until 1947 when he was sent to England to pursue further studies in English. Badawi first talks about the years of his early formation in the family, the neighbourhood and his various schools in Alexandria before discussing his cultural formation in the city. He reveals that he decided to specialise in English language in order to deepen his study of English literature so that he could see Arabic literature in the wider context of world literature. Badawi also describes his attitudes towards literature and criticism, which he says involved three essential questions: the relationship between literature and politics; the relationship between literature and morality; and the nature of language and its function in poetry, and consequently the relationship between poetry and science, or between poetry and thought or knowledge in general.

A Dictionary of Arabic Literary Terms and Devices

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlé Hammond
Keyword(s):  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Rhetorical Devices ◽  
Significant Figures ◽  
Modern Arabic ◽  
Technical Terms

Over 300 entriesThis new dictionary provides clear definitions of the most important literary terms and devices in classical and modern Arabic literature. It covers technical terms and rhetorical devices, themes and motifs, concepts, historical eras, literary schools and movements, forms and genres, and significant figures and institutions. Defining terms such as ‘root-play’, highlighting schools such as the Mahjar poets, and exploring concepts such as ‘imaginary evocation’, the dictionary introduces students of Arabic and Arabic literature to the specificities of the Arabic literary tradition and equips them with the tools to understand the nuances and complexities of the texts they encounter.

scholarly journals The Conversion of Pachomius Revisited

Scrinium ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-43
Author(s):  
Christian Barthel
Keyword(s):  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Conversion Narrative ◽  
Military Career

Abstract The article seeks to reassess and contextualise the conversion narrative of the Egyptian monk Pachomius, the founder of coenobitic monasticism. It thereby offers a case study into how and why the Pachomian literary tradition was shaped, altered and abridged, while also challenging the traditional views associated with Pachomius’ military career.

The city in modern Arabic literature

1986 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. C. Ostle
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Limited Range ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Implicit Contract ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Arabic ◽  
The City

A superficial consideration of the history of Arabic literature impresses one by the remarkable longevity of literary forms: a qaṣīda written by the pre-Islamic poet Imru'l-Qays and many of those written by Aḥmad Shawqī who died in 1932 are eminently recognizable members of the same species. The system of prosody as codified by Khalīl b. Ahmad (d. A.D. 791) was still very much in force, and the thematic divisions into nasīb, wasf, and madīḥ or hijā' still had much in common. Similarly the maqāma form with its or ornate rhyming prose and limited range of stock characters was still being produced in Arabic at the turn of this century, and the links with the works of al-Hamadhānī (d. A.D. 1008) and al-Harīrī (d. A.D. 1122) are plain to behold and to hear. As with much world literature which is the product of ‘conservative’ or ‘traditional’ societies (for want of better terms), style is all. In thematic terms there is an implicit contract of understanding between the writer and the small, rarefied, élitist public. They know what to expect and the writer or performer delivers. The language, both in its form and its content, is a vehicle through which the relationships between writer or performer, and public or audience, are expressed.

In Memoriam and Lycidas

PMLA ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 82 (5) ◽  
pp. 437-443
Author(s):  
Joseph Sendry
Keyword(s):  
Literary Tradition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Formal Structure ◽  
Traditional Form ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Pastoral Tradition ◽  
In Memoriam

Tennyson's In Memoriam furnishes a case study, a vexed and difficult one, in the persistence of literary tradition. Though it is not, strictly speaking, a pastoral elegy, In Memoriam yet retains unmistakable markings of the traditional form. A. J. Carr, for one, has recently insisted upon the importance of pastoral motifs “to provide the personal themes of In Memoriam with a formal structure responsive to both private instinct and the elegiac traditions.” On the other hand, others as early as A. C. Bradley and as recently as Elton Edward Smith have offered what amounts to the opposite judgment on the significance of the pastoral tradition as a key to the structure of In Memoriam. In Smith's words, “the classical elegiac conventions are observed, but not in such a way as to provide either a framework for the whole or dividing lines within the work.”

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