Showing papers in "Arabic & Middle Eastern Literature in 2001"

Childhood and modern Arabic literature: the initiation story

Abstract: (2001). Childhood and modern Arabic literature: the initiation story. Arabic & Middle Eastern Literature: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 167-178.

Recent publications on Arabic literature

Abstract: This is the second list of recent publications on Arabic literature to appear in Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures; it continues a feature of earlier issues of the Journal of Arabic Literature. It seeks to reflect the range and variety of work being done on Arabic literature and related subjects, in the Arab world and elsewhere. As a rule the books mentioned are not more than three years old when we go to press. (Because of unforeseen circumstances the publication of this list was delayed, it was drawn up in 1999.) Where possible, each entry includes a brief objective description of the contents of the book, but no critical judgement is expressed, nor does mention of the book amount to a recommendation. Authors, publishers and interested readers are invited to send books they wish to bring to Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures' attention or relevant information about them to Dr. Hilary Kilpatrick, 155 Avenue de Cour, CH-1007 Lausanne, Switzerland. Hilary Kilpatrick would like to thank those who have provided her with titles or books for this issue.

Alexandre et les sages de l'Inde

Abstract: Apres avoir resume en quelques pages la carriere d'Alexandre fils de Philippe, dans le vingt-sixieme chapitre de ses Prairies d'or, al-Mas'udl opere un retour en arriere pour raconter l'histoire de la rencontre du conquerant avec un roi-philosophe repondant au nom de Kand. Alors que tous les autres rois de la region s'etaient empresses de faire leur soumission et de porter tribut au Macedonien, c'est seulement par oui-dire que ce dernier apprit tout d'abord l'existence, aux confins du monde indien (fi aqdsi ard al-Hind), d'un roi repute pour sa sagesse et sa bonne administration. On lui pretait une existence de plusieurs centaines d'annees et il avait completement subjugue en lui Tame concupiscible et I'ame irascible. Alexandre lui envoie une missive arrogante le sommant de se presenter devant lui toutes affaires cessantes sous peine de voir son royaume aneanti. A cela l'lndien repond fort poliment qu'il possede des biens dont personne n'a l'equivalent et qu'il se propose de venir les remettre en personne a son correspondant. II s'agit d'une jeune fille telle que le soleil n'en a jamais vu de plus belle; d'un philosophe qui repond aux questions avant meme qu'on les lui ait posees, telle est l'acuite de son esprit et l'etendue de son savoir; d'un medecin si habile que la mort est bien la seule maladie dont il ne puisse vous preserver; et enfin une coupe a laquelle toute une armee peut se desalterer sans qu'elle cesse pour autant d'etre pleine a ras bords. Rempli de convoitise pour des biens aussi precieux, Alexandre envoie alors une delegation de sages escortee de troupes a Kand pour s'assurer de la veracite de ses dires. S'il a dit vrai, les envoyes ont pour mandat de rapporter les objets et les personnes en question et de laisser le roi en paix; dans le cas contraire, de le ramener lui a Alexandre. Les sages grecs se proposent de proceder a l'examen de la premiere affirmation du roi indien (la jeune fille) en presumant que si ce point s'avere exact, il en ira de meme des autres. Le roi, fianque de ses philosophes, commence par faire subir aux Grecs une sorte d'examen de philosophic naturelle et metaphysique, discutant longuement du Premier Principe et des phenomenes celestes. Apres quoi il fait entrer la jeune fille: totalement subjugues par sa beaute, ses hotes ne peuvent en detacher leurs regards au point que Ton a lieu de craindre pour leur raison. Une fois qu'ils ont k grand-peine retrouve leurs esprits, le roi les renvoie avec les quatre presents promis a Alexandre. Ce dernier n'est pas moins ebloui que ses sujets par la belle esclave et la fait enfermer avec soin dans son harem. II se dispose ensuite a mettre le philosophe a l'epreuve. Apres avoir longuement medite, il remplit une coupe de beurre a ras bords, de maniere qu'on ne puisse rien y ajouter, et la lui envoie. Celui-ci reflechit a son tour, persuade que le roi doit avoir une

Transgénérique et modernité dans la littérature arabe

Abstract: (2001). Transgenerique et modernite dans la litterature arabe. Arabic & Middle Eastern Literature: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 157-166.

Awlad Haratina: a tale of two texts

Abstract: The banning in Egypt of Naguib Mahfouz's novel Aivlad Haratina, in force now for more than 40 years, has left the text in a strange sort of limbo. The edition published in Beirut in 1967 differs in many details from what appeared in the pages of Al-Ahram in 1959 (21 September-25 December, inclusive). The manuscript is unavailable and may no longer exist, and the author has long since turned his back on his troublesome creation, so that his original intentions must be reconstructed by painstaking comparison of the two printed versions. Serialization of the novel was the first fruit of the exclusive contract that Al-Ahram secured with Mahfouz after he had won the State Prize for Literature. He simply handed over the manuscript and the newspaper did the rest, dividing it into 96 episodes (with hardly any regard for the division into chapters) and commissioning illustrations by al-Husayn Fawzl, some of which themselves deserve to be republished one day. The author was not asked to read the proofs, and he never saw the manuscript again (personal communication, 1962). Because of the controversy that it provoked, re-publication in book form was banned in Egypt. The novel was eventually brought out by Dar al-Adab in Beirut. Mahfouz was not consulted, played no part in the production of the book and did not receive any royalties (personal communication 1988). After he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988 there were renewed calls for it to be published in Egypt, but Mahfouz indicated that for the sake of peace he would not support this. Careful comparison of the two texts suggests that the missing manuscript may have found its way to Beirut and been used for the typesetting there. There are many cases where words or even whole phrases have been introduced, which no typesetter would have been likely to invent. There are also numerous differences that are more easily explained as variant readings from a manuscript than as changes made in copying from the printed page. If someone in the offices of Al-Ahram kept the manuscript and passed it on to Beirut, this raises delicate questions of ownership and responsibility, especially if the document still exists. The present study was undertaken purely as a scholarly investigation and without any intention of helping to resolve such problems. If both editions were typeset from the manuscript, and as neither of them was proof-read by the author, both are equally authentic and equally unreliable. Every discrepancy between them must therefore be weighed individually if a correct version is to be reconstructed. This work, presented here for the first time, was done in the preparation of the 1997 edition of my English translation, Children of Gebelaawi, which

Ut Pictura Poesis: text, image, identity and ideology in Nathan Shaham's series

Abstract: Nathan Shaham's novel, Series, is one of the most significant contemporary Israeli texts to explore the representation of cultural identity in general and of Jewish and Israeli identities in particular. The present article, which forms part of a larger analysis of poetic devices used in Hebrew literary texts to scrutinize issues of identity, discusses how Shaham employs text and image as devices to represent this investigation. Israeli writers are increasingly re-examining the national identity shaped for them by the founding Zionists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing in particular on their desire to construct a secular and revolutionary 'New Jew' in the context of a fresh (or refreshed) attachment to the ancestral homeland, and of a reversal and rejection of the diaspora. It is recognized that they created an inseparable link between ideology and identity of the kind condemned by Theodor Adorno, a Marxist of the Frankfurt School, on the grounds that these tend to equate distinct phenomena, suppress contradiction and 'homogenize' the world. Adorno saw the primal form of 'ideology' as 'identity' and recognized how it threatens to process social conflict out of existence in a 'totalitarian' way. Art alone speaks up for the differential and non-identical, promoting the claims of the sensuous particular against the tyranny of a seamless totality. Terry Eagleton has argued against this condemnation on the grounds that the ideological conditions of western societies are mixed and self-contradictory rather than totalitarian, but both his and Adorno's views confirm the closeness of the link between identity and ideology, a conjunction evident especially in Zionism. The debate over the desirability or otherwise of ideology is one of the central themes of Shaham's novel, Series. In this the author recounts the work of a television crew who, in 1991, at the height of the intifada? were engaged in planning a 10-programme documentary series for Israeli television. The omniscient narrator adopts the viewpoint of a different major character in each chapter. The principal protagonist, Adam Bauman, now aged 40, had been a famous film-maker in Poland, but had not made a film since he moved to the United States and later to Israel where he now lives. He chose as his cameraman Peter Kelner, an American aged nearly 50 and, as a researcher, Na'ama Sternberg, an Israeli-born woman in her 20s. All three are of Ashkenazi extraction, implicitly excluding the Oriental Jews who form roughly half of the population from this vision of contemporary Israeli society. Peter, inspired perhaps by American values, wants to depict ten exceptional characters (16); Adam, coloured by his Polish background, prefers 'unimportant' (17) or 'grey' ones. The narrator explains that 'he has a hidden ambition to succeed where others had failed. Any director can make an attractive film about big people. But only

Le champ d'emploi des termes ’ayyâr(i) et javânmard(i) dans le Dârâb Nâme d'Abu Tâher Tarsusi

Abstract: Le Ddrdb Name de Tarsusi, recit semi-populaire en prose du 6712 siecle environ, n'est aucunement un roman "de 'ayydrs", c'est-a-dire un roman dans lequel interviennent de facon significative des jeunes gens issus de milieux populaires urbains et developpant, au sein de confraternites, des qualites de conduite relevant du code ethique de javdnmardi. Pour cette definition du 'ayydr "professionnel", dont l'activite consiste a mettre ses capacites specifiques au service d'une cause ou d'une autre, on se refere evidemment au tableau que peut nous offrir un texte comme le Samak-e 'Ayydr, le roman de Faramarz b. Xodadad b. 'Abd Allah al-Kateb al-Arrajani, mis par ecrit au debut du 6/12 siecle environ et qui, en tant que recit a portee didactique, est intentionnellement tres explicite sur ce en quoi consistent 'ayydri et javdnmardi et leur exercice. Cependant, a la lecture du Ddrdb Name, l'attention ne peut manquer d'etre attiree par la frequence d'apparition des termes 'ayydrfl) et javdnmard(i) (adjectifs ou substantifs). Le premier y est utilise quarante et une fois, le second cent soixante deux fois. Le recit peut mentionner des 'ayydrs proprement dits, tels ceux de la ville d'Alep, appeles 'ayydrdn-e sahr, mais ils ne sont pas montres dans l'action quotidienne (I, p. 488). Ailleurs, le terme est plus souvent employe pour qualifier une maniere d'agir que pour designer une personne definie au travers d'un ensemble de competences particulieres, et il ne se rapporte de toute facon pas a des 'ayydrs de profession. Aussi tous ces termes interviennent-ils comme des mots courants dans le recit, utilises de fa?on usuelle, et c'est par le seul contexte — encore que celui-ci soit parfois absent —, que Ton peut se faire une idee de la situation qui a motive leur choix. En confrontant done les termes et leur champ d'emploi a ce qu'on sait du Samak-e 'Ayydr, on va tenter de voir ce qu'il y a de persistant ou de variable, d'un recit a l'autre, en ce qui concerne les situations, et surtout en ce qui concerne les acteurs de ces situations, puisque dans le Ddrdb Name aucun d'eux n'est un veritable 'ayydr.

Zeida de nulle part de Leïla Houari: l'écriture de l'entre‐deux

Abstract: (2001). Zeida de nulle part de Leila Houari: l'ecriture de l'entre‐deux. Arabic & Middle Eastern Literature: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 43-52.

Did Tarafa actually steal from Imru' al‐Qays? On coincidence of thoughts and expressions (tawarud) in Arabic literary theory

Abstract: The issue of literary ownership provoked and stimulated a fascinating debate in Arabic literary history and theory. Questions such as who treated what theme best, which poet lived off the work of another, who was the first poet to employ a specific idiom or a pattern of theme distribution, were common in the literary assemblies and discussions of the classical Islamic period. But one topic which seems to have generated an exceedingly remarkable interest has to do with the possibility or otherwise of two or more poets treating the same motif in similar or identical wording; that is, coincidence of phraseology and thoughts. The classical literary corpus exhibits not a few examples of poetical pieces which have similar wording although they are presumed to have been produced by different authors. Initially, this phenomenon evolved as an innocuous comedy in the literary tradition, but it later developed into a serious issue with far-reaching theoretical dimensions. For this study, a set of examples from Imru' al-Qays (c. 80 B. H./545) and Tarafa (c. 60 B. H./564) is selected as the locus classicus.

Mizrahi and Ashkenazi in the Israeli theatre

Abstract: (2001). Mizrahi and Ashkenazi in the Israeli theatre. Arabic & Middle Eastern Literature: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 19-36.

Experimentation with Narrative Techniques and Modes of Writing in 'Abd al-Rahmān Munīf's Mudun al-milh: al-tīh

Abstract: In several places in his book Al-Kdtib wa-al-manfd (The Writer and Exile), 'Abd al-Rahman Munif asserts his preoccupation with producing a national tradition of the novel. Such a preoccupation involves a great deal of experimentation with new narrative techniques and modes of writing inspired by the author's concern with drawing on the native literary heritage as well as his characteristic interest in basing his narrative on dramatizing national human concerns in a specific historical period. Munif s firm belief that the Arabic novel should be a unique literary product whose composition and shape are determined by its cultural milieu coincides with Q. D. Leavis's views on the distinctive character of the English novel. In an article entitled 'The Englishness of the English Novel', Leavis argues: