{"title":"The Libyan novel: humans, animals and the poetics of vulnerability","authors":"Brady Patrick Ryan","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2021.1891745","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2021.1891745","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"50 1","pages":"242 - 243"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77578119","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":"Utopian/Dystopian Lebanon: constructing place in Jabbūr al-Duwayhī’s Sharīd al-manāzil","authors":"Nadine Sinno","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2021.1917831","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2021.1917831","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Sharīd al-manāzil paints a portrait of Beirut at the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War. Born Muslim but raised by a Christian couple in the village of Ḥawra, Niẓām al-ʿAlamī embraces his mixed religious identity and seamlessly navigates Muslim and Christian religious rituals. He moves from Ḥawra to Beirut in search of adventure. When the war erupts, Niẓām is shunned by both Muslims and Christians. The seemingly utopian city is transformed into a dystopian place that demands strict sectarian affiliation and loyalty. Informed by studies of utopia and place, this essay offers a contextual analysis of the novel, focusing on three pivotal places in Niẓām’s life (and death), namely, the orchard of Niẓām’s adopted parents in Ḥawra, Niẓām’s rented apartment in Beirut, and his lover Janān’s workshop. I argue that by depicting the fluid construction of place and identity, al-Duwayhī’s novel elucidates the perils—and reversibility—of sectarianism.","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"8 1","pages":"177 - 197"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78848779","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":"Aḥmad al-Madīnī: a poetics of dissent","authors":"Anouar El Younssi","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2021.1875695","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2021.1875695","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article argues that the subversive overtones in Aḥmad al-Madīnī's novel Zaman bayna l-wilāda wa l-ḥulm (Time between Birth and Dream, 1974) target two distinct poles of authority, textual and extra-textual. The novel adopts what I call “a poetics of dissent,” with a penchant for rebellion against the classical Arabic novel-seen as a subset of the European realist novel-and the Arab-Moslem heritage. Published a few years after the 1967 Naksa, and two failed coups d'état in 1971 and 1972 in Morocco, the novel paints a gloomy picture of life in Morocco and the Arab world. The novel's experimental gymnastics is an attempt to achieve a formal shift in literary technique and an ideological shift in the politics of literary representation. A politization of form that goes hand in hand with a formalization of politics emerges as a critical dialectic in Zaman and by extension Moroccan experimental literature post-Independence.","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"87 8 1","pages":"1 - 23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91122273","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":"Adversary as protagonist: Palestinian Fiction by Mahmoud Shukair, Hanna Ibrahim and Ibtisam Azem mediated through the perspective of Jewish Israeli characters","authors":"A. Sheetrit","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2021.1877474","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2021.1877474","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study examines three Palestinian works, Hanna Ibrahim’s short story “Infiltrators,” (1954), Mahmoud Shukair’s short story “Mordechai’s Moustache and His Wife’s Cat” (2004) and Ibtisam Azem’s The Book of Disappearance (2014). Remarkably, each features a Jewish Israeli as a central character in the story; more intriguing, in each, the story is mediated through the perspective of that character – focalized by him or her. I address the significances generated by using focalization as a rhetorical strategy, particularly fraught because the perspective is that of a character from the other side of a national conflict. My analyses address whether the narrator reinforces the focalizer’s perceptions or undermines them, and how the technique of focalization unsettles established perceptions and offers critique of the system. I work through how conveying a story through the perception of a character on the opposite side of the conflict foregrounds and complicates structures of representation and power dynamics.","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"56 1","pages":"24 - 43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90965504","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":"Spinning toxic yarns of matter: material environments and marginalized toxic bodies in Latife Tekin's Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills and John Burnside's Glister","authors":"Adem Balci","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2021.1875621","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2021.1875621","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Within a material ecocritical framework, this article investigates the fatal consequences of toxicity on human beings, nonhuman entities, and the physical environment as reflected in Latife Tekin's Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills (1984) and John Burnside's Glister (2008). By emphasizing the agentic and narrative quality of matter, and by unearthing the trans-corporeal interactions between human/nonhuman bodies and the material world, it throws light on the materiality of the human body, explores the narrative agencies of storied matter, and unveils the disturbing stories the densely toxified lands and toxic bodies tell. The article examines how these two novels, albeit set in distinct geographies and cultures, interact with each other to delineate the complex human-nonhuman interactions in the production of toxic environments and marginalized toxic bodies. Such venture in works of eco-fiction coincides with the main objective of material ecocriticism, which draws attention to the stories inherent in the material world to prevent further human devastation.","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"11 3 Suppl 1","pages":"59 - 78"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78338015","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":"Eight poems by Golan Haji","authors":"Huda J. Fakhreddine","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2021.1880188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2021.1880188","url":null,"abstract":"Golan Haji (Jūlān Ḥājī, b. 1977) is a Kurdish-Syrian poet, translator, and physician, currently based in Paris. He is the author of five books of poetry. His first collection Nādā fī al-ẓulumāt (He...","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"36 1","pages":"105 - 110"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75778058","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":"A new study model for Arabic Sufi prose","authors":"Arin Salamah-Qudsi","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2021.1878647","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2021.1878647","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper sheds light on Arabic Sufi prose from the third/ninth to the seventh/thirteenth centuries. It begins with the “Sufi act,” a wide range of conditions that the Sufi embarks upon under the influence of the mystical states in his life, codes of behavior, interactions with others as well as his writing skills and activities. The paper then proposes a general study model for approaching Sufi prose based on its complex links with both the Sufi act and Arabic literary art during early medieval Islam. This model is based on two dominant features. The first captures the spiritual basis of the mystical moment (“texts with lived-experience features”), and the second describes more “rational” attempts to canonize the Sufi experience (“texts with post-experience features”). These features are not strict paradigmatic categories but, rather, indicators to discern the general tone, style and discourse structures that dominates each text.","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"8 1","pages":"79 - 96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82221166","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":"Translation and the Modern Arab Renaissance by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra","authors":"William Tamplin","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2021.1876336","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2021.1876336","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"49 1","pages":"97 - 104"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86599195","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":"Representation of the female body in Adalet Ağaoğlu's Ölmeye Yatmak and Leylâ Erbil's Tuhaf Bir Kadın","authors":"Şule Akdoğan","doi":"10.1080/1475262X.2021.1876426","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2021.1876426","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Adalet Ağaoğlu's Ölmeye Yatmak (Lying Down to Die, 1973) and Leylâ Erbil's Tuhaf Bir Kadın (A Strange Woman, 1971) are significant examples of Turkish literature that situate the female body within Turkish national history and discourse. 1 Their protagonists lock themselves in hotel rooms where they get closer to their body and sexuality, and reveal critical insights related to their society, particularly laying bare the intriguing relationships between different ideologies such as Islam, modernization project and socialism. I argue that these novels dauntlessly show the flawed, conflictual and oppressive nature of these ideologies in their attitudes towards women and their bodies, which is emphasized through the protagonists' problematic and unstable relationships with these discourses and their bodies. As the protagonists begin to voice their repressed sexual desires and reclaim the female body as a source of pleasure and autonomy, a space to break away from imposed configurations of womanhood is created.","PeriodicalId":53920,"journal":{"name":"Middle Eastern Literatures","volume":"25 1","pages":"44 - 58"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80204848","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}