Poetics Of Love In The Arabic Novel

Considers the Arabic novel within the triangle of the nation-state, modernity and traditionWen-Chin Ouyang explores the development of the Arabic novel, especially the ways in it engages with aesthetics, ethics and politics in a cross-cultural context and from a transnational perspective.Taking love and desire as the central tropes , the story of the Arabic novel is presented as a series of failed, illegitimate love affairs, all tainted by its suspicion of the legitimacy of the nation, modernity and tradition and, above all, by its misgiving about its own propriety.

Covers the entire history of modern Arabic literature from the late-19th century to the end of the 1980s, with examples drawn from countries as diverse as Egypt and Kuwait. Although the main accent is on the prose of Egypt and the countries of the Mashreq, North African literature is also included.

Considers the Arabic novel within the triangle of the nation-state, modernity and tradition.The novel is now a major genre in the Arabic literary field; this book explores the development of the novel, especially the ways in which the genre engages with a

Uncovers the politics of nostalgia and madness inherent in the Arabic novel. The Arabic novel has taken shape in the intercultural networks of exchange between East and West, past and present. Wen-chin Ouyang shows how this has created a politics of nostalgia which can be traced to discourses on aesthetics, ethics and politics relevant to cultural and literary transformations of the Arabic speaking world in the 19th and 20th centuries. She reveals nostalgia and madness as the tropes through which the Arabic novel writes its own story of grappling with and resisting the hegemony of both the state and cultural heritage.

Scenes from Arabian life at the turn of the twentieth century Arabian Romantic captures what it was like to live in central Arabia before the imposition of austere norms by the Wahhabi authorities in the early twentieth century: tales of robbery and hot pursuit; perilous desert crossings; scenes of exhaustion and chaos when water is raised from deep wells under harsh conditions; the distress of wounded and worn-out animals on the brink of perdition; once proud warriors who are at the mercy of their enemy on the field of battle. Such images lend poignancy to the suffering of the poet’s love-stricken heart, while also painting a vivid portrait of typical Bedouin life. Ibn Sbayyil, a town dweller from the Najd region of the Arabian Peninsula, was a key figure in the Nabaṭī poetic tradition. His poetry, which is still recited today, broke with the artifice of the preceding generation by combining inherited idiom and original touches reflecting his environment. Translated into English for the first time by Marcel Kurpershoek, Arabian Romantic will delight readers with a poetry that is direct, fluent, and expressive, and that has entertained Arabic speakers for over a century. An English-only edition.

This volume examines the treatment and expression of love in medieval literature and art. These nineteen essays, contributed by recognized authorities on medieval romantic expression, consider a wide variety of texts from the following cultures: French, Arabic, Latin, Hispanic, Hebrew, Provencal, and German. Teachers and students of medieval literature will find in this well-researched book cogent, contemporary analyses of written expressions of love in the Middle Ages.

In the long literary history of the Middle East, the notion of 'the beloved' has been a central trope in both the poetry and prose of the region. This book explores the concept of the beloved in a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary manner, revealing how shared ideas on the subject supersede geographical and temporal boundaries, and ideas of nationhood. The book considers the beloved in its classical, modern and postmodern manifestations, taking into account the different sexual orientations and forms of desire expressed. From the pre-Islamic 'Udhri (romantic unrequited love), to the erotic same-sex love in thirteenth century poetry and prose, the divine Sufi reflections on the topic, and post-revolutionary love encounters in Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, The Beloved in Middle Eastern Literatures connects the affective and cultural with the political and the obscene. In focusing on the diverse manifestations of love and tropes of the lover/beloved binary, this book is unique in foregrounding what is often regarded as a 'taboo subject' in the region. The multi-faceted outlook reveals the variety of philological, philosophical, poetic and literary forms that treat this significant motif.

Love has been an important trope in the literature of the region we now call the Middle East, from ancient times to modern. This book analyses love poetry in various ancient and contemporary languages of the Middle East, including Akkadian, ancient Egyptian, Classical and Modern Standard Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Turkish and Kurdish, including literary materials that have been discovered and highlighted for the first time. Together, the chapters reflect and explore the discursive evolution of the theme of love, and the sensibilities, styles and techniques used to convey it. They chart the way in which poems in ancient poetry give way to complex and varied reflections of human sentiments in the medieval languages and on to the modern period which in turn reflects the complexities and nuances of present times. Offering a snapshot of the diverse literary languages and their relationship to the theme of love, the book will be of interest to scholars of Near and Middle Eastern Literature and Culture.