Exploring Arab Folk Literature

Exploring Arab Folk Literature PDF Author: Pierre Cachia
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748654054
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The character and range of Arab folk literature are investigated by Pierre Cachia in this collection of his pioneering essays in the field. Arranged into three sections, Cachia looks first at historical developments in the relationship between Arab folk literature and that of the elite, the gradual elaboration of certain genres, and the producers of folk literature. He then devotes a substantial section to the consideration of single or related texts. Finally he searches for evidence of social and cultural implications and for differences of attitudes of folk and elite towards sensitive issues.This book represents a major contribution to our understanding of Arab folk literature and will be of relevance to anyone with an interest in Arab literary creativity.

Exploring Arab Folk Literature

Exploring Arab Folk Literature PDF Author: Pierre Cachia
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748654054
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
The character and range of Arab folk literature are investigated by Pierre Cachia in this collection of his pioneering essays in the field. Arranged into three sections, Cachia looks first at historical developments in the relationship between Arab folk literature and that of the elite, the gradual elaboration of certain genres, and the producers of folk literature. He then devotes a substantial section to the consideration of single or related texts. Finally he searches for evidence of social and cultural implications and for differences of attitudes of folk and elite towards sensitive issues.This book represents a major contribution to our understanding of Arab folk literature and will be of relevance to anyone with an interest in Arab literary creativity.

Ways of Seeking

Ways of Seeking PDF Author: Emily Drumsta
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520390202
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In Ways of Seeking, Emily Drumsta traces the influence of detective fiction on the twentieth-century Arabic novel. Theorizing a “poetics of investigation,” she shows how these novels, far from staging awe-inspiring feats of logical deduction, mock the truth-seeking practices on which modern exercises of colonial and national power are often premised. Their narratives return to the archives of Arabic folklore, Islamic piety, and mysticism to explore less coercive ways of knowing, seeing, and seeking. Drumsta argues that scholars of the Middle East neglect the literary at their peril, overlooking key critiques of colonialism from the intellectuals who shaped and responded through fiction to the transformations of modernity. This book ultimately tells a different story about the novel’s place in the constellation of Arab modernism, modeling an innovative method of open-ended inquiry based on the literary texts themselves.

Literature

Literature PDF Author: David Damrosch
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470671904
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1789

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Book Description
LITERATURE A WORLD HISTORY An exploration of the history of the world’s literatures and the many varieties of literary expression Literature: A World Historyencompasses all the world’s major literary traditions, emphasizing the interrelationship of local and national cultures over time. Spanning global literature from the beginnings of recorded history to the present day, this expansive four-volume set examines the many varieties of the world’s literatures in their social and intellectual contexts. Its four volumes are devoted to literature before 200 CE, from 200 to 1500, from 1500 to 1800, and from 1800 to 2000, with four dozen contributors providing new insights into the art of literature, and addressing the situation of literature in the world today. Organized throughout in six broad regions—Africa, the Americas, East Asia, Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania, and West and Central Asia—Literature: A World History offers readers a clear and consistent treatment of diverse forms of literary expression across time and place. Throughout the text, particular emphasis is placed on literary institutions within different regional and linguistic cultures and on the relations between literature and a spectrum of social, political, and religious contexts. Features work by an international panel of leading scholars from around the globe, in Africa, the Middle East, South and East Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Europe, and the United States Provides a balanced overview of national and global literature from all major regions of the world from antiquity to the present Highlights the specificity of regional and local cultures throughout much of literary history, together with cross-cutting essays on topics such as different writing systems, court cultures, and utopias Literature: A World History is an invaluable reference work for undergraduate and graduate students as well as scholars looking for a wide-ranging overview of global literary history.

Laugh like an Egyptian

Laugh like an Egyptian PDF Author: Cristina Dozio
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311072541X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Egyptians are known among the Arabs as awlād al-nukta, Sons of the Jokes, for their ability to laugh in face of adversity. This creative weapon has been directed against socio-political targets both in times of oppression and popular upheaval, such as the 2011 Tahrir Revolution. This book looks at the literary expression of Egyptian humour in the novels of Muḥammad Mustajāb, Khayrī Shalabī, and Ḥamdī Abū Julayyil, three writers who revive the comic tradition to innovate the language of contemporary fiction. Their modern tricksters, wise fools, and antiheroes play with the stereotypical traits attached to the ordinary Egyptians, while laughing at the universal contradictions of life. This ability to combine local and global culture, literary traditions and popular references, makes them a stimulating read in an intercultural perspective. Combining humour studies and literary criticism, this book examines language play and narrative creativity to understand which strategies craft Egyptian literary humour. In doing so, it sheds light on the contribution of humour to literary innovations of Egyptian fiction since the late Seventies, while adding new writers to those who are considered the masters of humour in the Arab novel.

Sacred Language, Vernacular Difference

Sacred Language, Vernacular Difference PDF Author: Annette Damayanti Lienau
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691249881
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
How Arabic influenced the evolution of vernacular literatures and anticolonial thought in Egypt, Indonesia, and Senegal Sacred Language, Vernacular Difference offers a new understanding of Arabic’s global position as the basis for comparing cultural and literary histories in countries separated by vast distances. By tracing controversies over the use of Arabic in three countries with distinct colonial legacies, Egypt, Indonesia, and Senegal, the book presents a new approach to the study of postcolonial literatures, anticolonial nationalisms, and the global circulation of pluralist ideas. Annette Damayanti Lienau presents the largely untold story of how Arabic, often understood in Africa and Asia as a language of Islamic ritual and precolonial commerce, assumed a transregional role as an anticolonial literary medium in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By examining how major writers and intellectuals across several generations grappled with the cultural asymmetries imposed by imperial Europe, Lienau shows that Arabic—as a cosmopolitan, interethnic, and interreligious language—complicated debates over questions of indigeneity, religious pluralism, counter-imperial nationalisms, and emerging nation-states. Unearthing parallels from West Africa to Southeast Asia, Sacred Language, Vernacular Difference argues that debates comparing the status of Arabic to other languages challenged not only Eurocentric but Arabocentric forms of ethnolinguistic and racial prejudice in both local and global terms.

Stranger Magic

Stranger Magic PDF Author: Marina Warner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674065077
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
Our foremost theorist of myth, fairytale, and folktale explores the magical realm of the imagination where carpets fly and genies grant prophetic wishes. Stranger Magic examines the profound impact of the Arabian Nights on the West, the progressive exoticization of magic, and the growing acceptance of myth and magic in contemporary experience.

Words Like Daggers: The Political Poetry of the Negev Bedouin

Words Like Daggers: The Political Poetry of the Negev Bedouin PDF Author: Kobi Peled
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004501827
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
The book explores the political poetry recited by the Negev Bedouin from the late Ottoman period to the late twentieth century. By closely reading fifty poems Kobi Peled sheds light on the poets’ sentiments, states of mind and worldviews.

Discovering Islam

Discovering Islam PDF Author: Akbar S. Ahmed
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040280404
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Now reissued with a new introduction, Discovering Islam is a classic account of how the history of Islam and its relations with the West have shaped Islamic society today. Islam is often caricatured as aggressive and fanatic. Written in the tradition of Ibn Khaldun, this readable and wide-ranging book balances that image, uncovers the roots of Islamic discontent and celebrates the sources of its strength. From the four "ideal Caliphs" who succeeded the Prophet to the refugee camps of Peshawar, an objective picture emerges of the main features of Muslim history and the compulsions of Muslim society.

Childhoods at the Intersection of the Local and the Global

Childhoods at the Intersection of the Local and the Global PDF Author: Afua Twum-Danso Imoh
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137283343
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Childhoods at the Intersection of the Local and the Global examines the imposition of the modern Western notion of childhood, which is now deemed as universal, on other cultures and explores how local communities react to these impositions in various ways such as manipulation, outright rejection and acceptance. The book discusses childhoods in different regions of the world and boasts a range of contributors from several academic disciplines such as Sociology, Social Work, Education, Anthropology, Criminology and Human Rights, who are experts on the regions they discuss. The book argues against the notion of a universal childhood and illustrates that different societies around the world have different notions of childhood. This book is recommended reading for students, scholars and practitioners working with children in the Global South as well as internationally.

A Bed for the King's Daughter

A Bed for the King's Daughter PDF Author: Shahla Ujayli
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477322302
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 59

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Book Description
A groundbreaking collection of experimental short fiction by award-winning Syrian author and Booker International Prize for Arabic Fiction nominee Shahla Ujayli, A Bed for the King’s Daughter uses surrealism and irony to examine such themes as women’s agency, the decline of collective life and imagination under modernity, and the effects of social and political corruption on daily life. In “The Memoir of Cinderella’s Shoes,” Cinderella uses her famous glass slipper as a weapon in order to take justice into her own hands. In “Tell Me About Surrealism,” an art history professor’s writing assignment reveals the slipperiness of storytelling, and in “Merry Christmas,” the realities of apartheid interfere with one family’s celebration. Through twenty-two short stories, Ujayli animates—with brevity and inventiveness—themes relevant to both the particularities of life in the Arab world and life outside it.