scholarly journals Historieskriveren Elias Khoury

2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (62) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerstin Eksell

Kerstin Eksell: “Elias Khoury the Storywriter”The novel, Ka´annahā nāʾima, As If She Was Sleeping from 2007, is set in Beirut and Nazareth between 1923 and 1948. The Lebanese Milia marries the Palestinian Mansour, and they settle down to daily life in Nazareth, where Milia finally gives birth to a son. Much of the story is told in the form of Milia’s dreams and recapitulates the family history in early 20th century Beirut.The novel is multilayered, mixing high and low registers, and rich in intertextual references. The Christian myth of death and sacrifice functions as a historical allegory of the political tragedy of the modern Arab world, in particular that of Palestine. However, the vitality and strength of Milia – Mary offers an alternative reading of human survival and resurrection, deeply rooted in the oriental potential of mysticism and poetry.

Author(s):  
Katharine M. Cockin

Cicely Hamilton, lesbian actor, author, and women’s suffrage activist, is best known for her plays Diana of Dobson’s (1908), exposing exploitation in the retail trade, How the Vote Was Won (1909), a suffrage comedy co-authored with Christopher St. John, and A Pageant of Great Women, which raised consciousness about women’s history in productions across Britain from 1909 to 1912. Hamilton also wrote nondramatic works, including the political tract Marriage as a Trade (1909) and the novel William, An Englishman (1919), which was inspired by her experience of wartime France. Hamilton’s prolific writing career reflects her wide-ranging interests, political commitments, and sense of public duty; her plays exemplify the intersection of Feminism and theater in the early 20th century.


2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Weideman

AbstractUnder the Bourguiba and Bin ʿAli regimes, the early 20th-century women's rights advocate Tahar Haddad (1899–1935) was a symbol of “state feminism.” Nationalist intellectuals traced the 1956 Personal Status Code to Haddad's work, and Bourguiba and Bin ʿAli claimed to “uphold” his ideals and “avenge” the persecution he suffered at the hands of the ʿulamaʾ at the Zaytuna mosque-university. Breaking with “old regime” narratives, this article studies Haddad as a reformist within Tunisia's religious establishment. Haddad's example challenges the idea that Islamic reformists “opened the door to” secularists in the Arab world. After independence, Haddad's ideas were not a starting point for Tunisia's presidents, but a reference point available to every actor in the political landscape.


2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-28
Author(s):  
Leszek Zinkow

This paper brings to light the reports and analyses written by Tadeusz Smoleński, a forgotten source on the political history of the Middle East and particularly Egypt, in the first decade of the 20th century. Tadeusz Smoleński (1884–1909), the first Polish Egyptologist, was also a regular correspondent of the Lviv daily newspaper Słowo Polskie [‘The Polish Word’]. In his reports, he outlines a panoramic view of Egypt’s extraordinarily complex political situa­tion, determined by tensions between the European powers, i.e., the rivalry between Britain and France, and between Russia and Germany. Another fac­tor whose growing importance was noted by the Polish observer, is the rise of nationalist and Islamist movements in both Egypt and the Arab world as a whole. This takes place alongside the chronic political instability of the Otto­man Empire. While acknowledging all of the beneficial aspects of British rule (especially under the consulship of Sir Evelyn Baring), Smoleński does not hide his sympathies for Mus????t????afà Kāmil Bāšā, leader of the Egyptian national­ists. In his analysis, Smoleński also hints at some analogies between the situa­tion of the Egyptians and the Poles in their ambitions to set up an independ­ent nation-state.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 649-661
Author(s):  
Carl Philipp Roth

Abstract Der Beitrag untersucht die Bedeutung des Schachspiels in Elias Canettis Roman Die Blendung zum einen auf der Ebene der historischen und sozialen Kontexte, in denen der Schachspieler Siegfried Fischer im Wien des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts steht. Er fokussiert zum anderen die Bedeutung des Schachspiels auf Handlungsebene. Denn Siegfried Fischer – genannt Fischerle – überträgt seine strategischen Fähigkeiten im Schach auf die ihn umgebende Welt und bringt so Peter Kien ,Zug um Zug‘ um dessen Reichtum.The article examines the significance of chess in Elias Canetti’s novel Die Blendung in the historical and social context of early 20th century Vienna. It further focuses on the function of chess within the novel: The actor and chess player Siegfried Fischer – called Fischerle – transfers his strategic skills from chess to his surroundings, thus depriving Peter Kien of his wealth ‘move by move’.


2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-213
Author(s):  
Christoph Von Blumröder

The term "Neue Musik" was coined for a special concept of fundamental musical innovation within Austro-German music theory of the early 20th century, and it found no terminological equivalent beyond the German language. Established by Paul Bekker with his lecture “Neue Musik” in 1919, composers such as Stockhausen or Ligeti embraced the term with its emphatic claim to innovation and new departures. However, one hundred years on the term "Neue Musik" is often used mainly as a synonym for any type of contemporary music. This article questions whether the term "Neue Musik" is still an appropriate framework for a current theory of musical composition. Not only have the specific musical circumstances changed within the course of the 20th century, but also the political and social conditions have altered drastically after two world wars which had given special impulses to those composers who strove for a new foundation of music after 1918 and 1945 respectively. This article argues that the age of "Neue Musik" has come to an end in the late 20th century, and thus it is now necessary to introduce alternative terminological concepts and methodical directions for music historiography.


Lateral ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Moriah

Kristin Moriah’s essay is rooted in extensive archival work in the US and Germany, examining the transatlantic circulation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin through markets of performance and literature in and between Germany and the United States. The essay follows the performative tropes of Uncle Tom’s Cabin from its originary political resonances to the present-day restaurants, train-stops, and housing projects named for the novel. Moriah reveals how the figurations of blackness arising from these texts are foundational to the construction of Germanness and American-German relations in the early 20th century and beyond.


2018 ◽  
pp. 359-373
Author(s):  
Dominika Gołaszewska-Rusinowska

This case study focuses on the life and work of Joaquín Costa. He was a Spanish intellectual who in late 19th century and early 20th century started the intellectual and political movement called Regenerationism. This movement emerged in response against the political system of Spanish Restoration.  


Author(s):  
Elsi Hyttinen

Simultaneously Elsewhere. Imagining Migrancy in Early 20th Century Finnish Literature The article discusses the functions of early 20th century Finnish language fiction on Finnish­American migrancy. The author suggests that fiction depicting migrant life served its contemporary readership as a utopic ”elsewhere” where mobility, gender and agency could be articulated differently from what could be done in literature depicting life in Finland. The argument is developed through readings of three reoccurring tropes articulating migrant subjectivity in fiction: the family (or, rather, its absence), the tramp and the urban housemaid. From a transnational perspective, the article engages with, even if respectfully distances itself from, earlier research on Finnish­American migrant literature with its strong emphasis on reading fiction as representing real­life migrant. Instead, it is proposed that it might be fruitful to approach migrant literature and Finnish literature depicting life in Finland as a diffuse whole, where ideological investments are to an extent bound to locations but not explained causally by them.


Author(s):  
Nada Shabout

The perception of the Arabic letter in art has gone through many changes from the Islamic civilization to the modern age. Following the political and socio-cultural changes of the 19th and 20th century, the Arabic script lost its sacredness. After decades of limited existence in traditional craft, the Arabic letter reappeared in modern Arab art around the middle of the 20th century on nationalistic bases. The Arabic language had acquired a high value during the age of colonialism as a symbol of national identity, a unifier; this value only grew stronger with time. The letter was also a signifier that aided twentieth-century Arab artists in their artistic identity crisis. A number of art groups—such as the Baghdad Group of Modern Art, formed in 1951—were established with their focus on a search for a local or national art style through ‘istilham al-turath,’ seeking inspiration from tradition. The Arabic letter became the means for connecting artists’ present with their past and allowing for the invention of tradition. Huroufiyah (Arabic for Letterism), a highly contested term initiated by a newspaper journalist, became a term popularly used to signify all experiments with the Arabic letter in the modern Arab art. Nevertheless, the term is surrounded by controversy in the contemporary Arab world and rejected by a number of scholars and artists. The term al-Madrassa al-Khattiya Fil-Fann (Calligraphic School of Art), has been alternatively proposed, expressing specifically a perceived continuation with Islamic calligraphy.


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