31102 - Arabic Literature 1

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, the student is aware of the significant issues and specific aspects of Arabic literature's history concerning the reference time frame. Students are able to understand and translate texts in the original language. Also, they have acquired the basic theoretical knowledge to deal with the critical interpretation of literary contents, being able to comment on texts and explain them according to multiple methodologies of analysis.

Course contents

While discussing the relationship between tradition and modernity in dialogic terms, students are introduced to different literary text types and some critical approaches to literary composition and analysis (rhetoric/Arabic metrics). The course will provide students with the tools to properly contextualize the texts to reflect on the construction of the literary canon cross-temporally. Further attention will be paid to some genres often placed outside mainstream literature (e.g., epistolary literature, popular literature).

The course aims to explore how themes of Arabic literature, from ancient to pre-modern times, harmoniously echo in contemporary production. Among the topics of the course, there will be examples of pre-Islamic literature (mu'allaqat and prose) and how they have a powerful echo in contemporary desert literature (e.g., Ibrahim al-Kuni); the Koran and the theme of good and evil in intertextuality with the masterpieces of nineteenth-century literature; courtly hunting literature (al-tardiyyat) and its legacy in the modern ghazal; al-Jahiz's epistolary literature and some modern examples from Jibran Khalil Jibran and Tayyib Saleeh's production, Sicilian-Arabic poetry and its echoes in current Sicilian musical production.

A number of texts in Arabic with their translation will be provided during the class and commented on with the help of the instructor. She will help students develop a critical approach to the history of the Arab literary tradition and its sources. Mandatory languages are Italian, Arabic, and at least one between English and French, upon choice.

Readings/Bibliography

All sources are available on Virtuale. Throughout the course, students will be informed of possible changes

Bibliography:

Adūnīs, al-Thābit wa-l-mutaḥawwil, 4 vols. Beirut, Dār al-Sāqī, 1994, sezioni scelte.

Bausani, Alessandro, “Le Lingue Islamiche” in Idem; Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti [Ed.], Il mondo islamico fra interazione e acculturazione, Roma: Sapienza Università di Roma, 1981, pp. 3-19

Ghersetti, A., “Quelques notes sur la définition canonique de balāgha”. In Orientalia, no. 87, Leuven University Press, 1998, pp. 57-72.

Gutas, D., Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ʻAbbāsid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th Centuries), Routledge, London and NY, 1998, sezioni scelte.

Homerin, Emil, Filled with a Burning Desire: lbn al-Farid-Poet, Mystic, and Saint, Ph.D. diss., (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987, sezioni scelte.

Jayyusi, Salma Khaḍra, Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry, Leiden, Brill, 1977, sezioni scelte.

Kennedy, Philip F., The Wine Song in Classical Arabic Poetry. Abu Nuwas and the Literary Tradition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1-18.

Kövecses, Zoltán, Metaphor and Emotion Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 20-34.

al-Musawi, Muhsin Jassim, Scheherazade In England. A Study of Nineteenth-Century English Criticism of the Arabian Nights, Washington D.C.: The Three Continents Press, 1978, sezioni scelte.

Sells, Michael A., “Bewildered Tongue: The Semantics of Mystical Union in Islam” in Idel, Moshe and McGinn, Bernard [Eds], Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. An Ecumenical Dialogue, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016, pp. 87-124, cit. 88.

Talib, Adam; Hammond, Marle; Schippers, Arie, The Rude, the Bad and the Bawdy: Essays in Honour of Professor Geert Jan Van Gelder, Cambridge UK: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2014, 141-159 and 230-253.

Additional References:

Bordieu, P.; Randal Johnson (a cura di). The field of the cultural production, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, sezioni scelte.

Jauss, H.R., Estetica della ricezione, traduzione di Antonello Giugliano, Napoli: Guida, 1988, sezioni scelte.

Poggioli, Renato, The theory of the avant-garde, Trans. Gerald Fitzgerald. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1968, sezioni scelte.

Excerpts (in Arabic with translation):

Al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasā-il al-Jāḥiẓ, Beirut: Dār al-Nahda al-ʿArabiyya, 1983.

Mursī, Aḥmad Al-ughniya ash-sha῾biyya, Dār al-Ma῾ārif, Il Cairo, 1983.

Safwat, Aḥmad Zakī, Jamharat Rasā’il al-ʽArab, 4 vol, Beirut, Maktabat al-‘ilmiyyah, 1938

Teaching methods

Lessons will be held in person

Assessment methods

The course has three graded components: a) attendance and class participation; b) group presentations: students are responsible for leading in-course seminars focused on course topics; c) an end-course oral exam

To take the exam as a non-attending student (also from previous years), please contact the instructor.

Teaching tools

Texts, audio-video sources, additional materials provided by the instructor.

Office hours

See the website of Chiara Fontana