Middle Eastern Literatures最新文献

{"title":"Modern nihilism and Naguib Mahfouz’s faith in liberalism","authors":"Ken Seigneurie","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2022.2147415","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2022.2147415","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT By mid-twentieth century, liberal thought was in crisis. Its victory over fascism ill concealed the empty promise at the heart of liberalism, that freedom defined as an absence of compulsion could substitute for a sense of human purpose. Non-western writers saw this as clearly as Camus, Arendt, Niebuhr, and Marcuse did. This essay regards Naguib Mahfouz’s 1965 novel, The Beggar, as a bid to critically intervene in debates around the crisis of liberal thought. It departs from approaches that see The Beggar as a thematization of political, Existentialist or Sufi discourses. Employing a close-reading method, it shows how the text ironizes its high-profile protagonist’s mid-life crisis and quest for spiritual awakening. Analysis reveals that ostensibly secondary female characters, especially the protagonist’s fourteen-year-old daughter, are part of a palimpsestic subtext that thematizes Christian–Muslim-Christian conversion and the potential role of faith as a corrective to the nihilistic void at the heart of liberal thought.","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"116 1","pages":"167 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79193781","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"In memoriam: Franklin Lewis (1961-2022)","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/1475262x.2021.2145034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262x.2021.2145034","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"25 1","pages":"246 - 248"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78111962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Is the Arab nahḍah really Arabic? Literary translingualisms in the nahḍah's contact zones","authors":"Alaaeldin Mahmoud","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2022.2114681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2022.2114681","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Against the perception of the nahḍah’s literati in Egypt and the Arab mashriq as being narrowly monolingual, due to their literary use of fuṣḥā Arabic and the various ʿāmmiyyahs, this article highlights literary translingual practices in the nahḍah’s contact zones in Egypt, Syro-Lebanon, and Iraq. Literary translingualisms took various forms such as bi-or-translingual azjāl (“vernacular verse”) and mulammaʿāt (macaronic verse), as well as self-translations. This article focuses on literary translingual practice manifest in the zajal of Muḥammad ʿUthmān Jalāl, Badīʿ Khayrī, Bayram al-Tūnisī, and ʿAlī Diyāb, as well as the mulammaʿāt of ʿAbbūd al-Karkhī. The intricate relations of power among the languages of the nahḍah (i.e. Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and fuṣḥā Arabic in addition to a host of European languages, especially French and English) are also featured in the literary works of authors such as ʿĀʾishah Ismāʿīl Taymūr and Hijri Dede.","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"15 1","pages":"190 - 208"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81597671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Tent Generation: Palestinian Poems","authors":"Tayseer Abu Odeh","doi":"10.1080/1475262x.2022.2131905","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262x.2022.2131905","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"29 1","pages":"249 - 251"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85215056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Arabic exile literature in Europe. Defamiliarising forced migration","authors":"A. Bianco","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2022.2123165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2022.2123165","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"254 1","pages":"252 - 254"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76762384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Pantomime”: A short story by Sami Paşazade Sezai","authors":"Translated by Ici Vanwesenbeeck","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2021.2146286","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2021.2146286","url":null,"abstract":"“Pantomime” ( پ ا ن د و م ی م ا , 1891 ) by nineteenth-century Ottoman writer Sami Paşazade Sezai (1859–1936) is considered by critics as one of the first modern short stories in Turkish literature, and a precursor of Turkish literary realism. As suggested by the title of the collection in which it was published, Little Things ( ك و چ ك ش ي ل ر Küçük Şeyler), Sezai’s aspiration was to make the unnoticed appear, telling the story of the seemingly ordinary details of everyday life. A transitional writer who comfortably navigated the familiar waters of Romanticism while experimenting with Realism, Sezai crafted his stories with the awareness that he was writing at the crossroads of language reform and literary explorations in the fin de siècle Ottoman Empire. Although he admired French writers like most of his contemporaries (he even translated Daudet’s “L’Arlésienne” in Little Things), he developed a distinct authorial voice through his engagement with form and language in his short stories. In this sense, “Pantomime” constitutes a canonical story in Ottoman literature that represents Sezai’s literary style and it demonstrates the liminality of writing practices at the time, between tradition and modernity, Romanticism and Realism. “Pantomime” is about the tragic life and suicide of a thirty-three-year-old clown, Pascal. The most distinct element in the story is the ubiquitous silence that pervades Pascal’s life, blurring the line between his pantomime presence on stage, and his existence offstage. The writer masterfully distills the unsettling silence in the plot and contrasts it with the laughter of the spectators and the jovial twitter of birds. One of the story’s most recurring words, س ک و ن ت (sükûnet: quietude, stillness), also testifies to the uneasy stillness that the writer weaves into the story. This intense sadness ( ح ز ن , hüzün) also spills into the city. Even the ruins of the Byzantine fortress and chant-like bird songs exude melancholy. While the author’s melancholic gaze paints every part of Istanbul with hüzün, it is Pascal’s tragic life that remains central to the story. For Sezai, it is the tragic life of an outsider that lends itself to literary exploration. His contemplative storytelling negotiates descriptions of Pascal, who is portrayed as both a circus performer and a human, and as both comedic and tragic. While Romanticism is heavily felt in Sezai’s depictions of Byzantine ruins, gardens, and the big tree in the courtyard of Pascal’s house, keen physical and psychological depictions of him demonstrate modern elements. Most interesting, and most challenging to capture in translation, is the quiet yet intense storytelling in “Pantomime.” Also hard to render is Sezai’s economy of words which depart from the style of earlier short stories. His language is lighter and his paragraphs are not drowned by long and ornate Persian ezāfe ( ا ض ا ف ه : Persian grammatical construct where words are annexed to make adjectival phrases, a","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"102 1","pages":"241 - 245"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89199659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Al-Qaṣīdah al-baṣariyyah fī-l-shiʿir al-ʿarabī al-ḥadīth (The Visual Poem in Modern Arabic Poetry)","authors":"Dima Nasser","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2022.2050044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2022.2050044","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"165 1","pages":"165 - 166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73578005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beholding beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the aesthetics of desire in medieval Persian poetry","authors":"Jonathan Lawrence","doi":"10.1080/1475262x.2021.2021503","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262x.2021.2021503","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"163 1","pages":"163 - 164"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80277402","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Hafiz and his contemporaries: poetry, performance and patronage in fourteenth-century Iran","authors":"Domenico Ingenito","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2022.2026051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2022.2026051","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"17 1","pages":"161 - 163"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80887361","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Muḥammad al-Māghūṭ’s rhetoric of sincerity: a major voice in modern Arabic poetry","authors":"Daniel Behar","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2022.2079969","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2022.2079969","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article highlights the poetics of Syrian poet Muḥammad al-Māghūt ̣(1934-2006) as forging a poetic identity enacted as a series of performative contradictions between the empirical and the poetic selves in what amounts to a discourse of “rhetorical sincerity.” This poetic discourse employs a variety of devices to communicate that the irreducibility of Arab life can be contained neither in the polished spheres of art nor in political speech-making. By situating personas close to commonalities of human struggles without subtracting critical distance, al-Māghūṭ negotiates a modernistic consciousness with values of ṣidq (sincerity) and aṣāla (authenticity). Part one develops the concept of poetic sincerity and delineates al-Māghūt'̣s cultural battles. Part two examines al-Māghūt'̣s rhythmic irregularities in “al-Qatl” (The Killing) as a key component in accomplishing the non-literary task of his ṣidq. This interpretation will hopefully elucidate the rationale behind al-Māghūt'̣s import for later poetic generations.","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"27 1","pages":"111 - 136"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77217096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}