Selected Studies On Genre In Middle Eastern Literatures

Selected Studies on Genre in Middle Eastern Literatures

The examination of literary genres in the Middle East opens the possibility of gaining new insights into the intellectual universe of Middle Eastern societies, the question of production of meaning, what “literature” meant in different historical periods, and the underlying epistemology of producing knowledge, and how this epistemology has changed over time. This book comprises 12 case studies from the three major Middle Eastern languages – Arabic, Persian, and Turkish – written by experts in the field. It brings together a wide range of approaches – from the study of epics to an analysis of travelogues, and from classical poetry to novels. Instead of focusing on one period or juxtaposing the classical genres and the West-induced development of “modern genres,” the studies in their totality apply a broad diachronic and synchronic perspective, with the potential to create a comparative framework for the study of the sociocultural and narratological dimensions of genre in the Middle East.

Selected Studies in Modern Arabic Narrative

No Western scholar has contributed as much to the study of modern Arabic narrative as has Roger Allen. His doctoral dissertation was the very first Oxford D.Phil. in modern Arabic literature, completed in 1968 under the supervision of Mustafa Badawi. That same year, he took a position in Arabic language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, the oldest professorial post in Arabic in the United States. Roger Allen has been phenomenally prolific: fifty books and translations, two hundred articles and counting-on Arabic language pedagogy, on translation, on Arabic literary history, criticism and literature. He is also one of the most decorated and acclaimed translators of Arabic literature. The present volume brings together sixteen of Roger Allen's articles on modern Arabic narrative, with a focus on genre, translation and literary history, and features analyses of the works of Rashid Abu Jadrah, Bensalem Himmich, Yusuf Idris, Naguib Mahfouz, and Tayeb Salih.

Emerging Subjectivity in the Long 19th-Century Middle East