31186 - Arab Literature 2

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 (epistolary literature, popular literature, journalism).

Arabic Literature 2
The course is an overview of Arab literary production from the 12th century to the present day, with particular attention to the evolution of different writing practices (poetry/prose). Among the topics addressed are Ibn al-Mu'tazz and the revolution of the moderns, the feeling of nostalgia between al-Andalus and Palestine, Sufism as the driving force of Islam, and the linkages between popular literature and music. Notably, a final module will offer thematic insights into journalism, Arabic theatre, and the contemporary Arabic "Rebel" literary production of the '60s and '70s - with particular reference to Egypt, Sham, and Iraq. This shows how this production has contributed to renewing the literary canon, building upon both experimentation and tradition-grounded solutions.


Arabic Literature 3
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.

For both courses, a number of texts in Arabic 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.

Gershoni, Israel, “Egyptian Liberalism in an Age of "Crisis of Orientation": Al-Risala's Reaction to Fascism and Nazism, 1933-39,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Nov.,1999), pp. 551-576.

Haddad, Mahmoud, “The Rise of Arab Nationalism Reconsidered”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (May 1994), pp. 201-222.

Hafez, Sabri, “Cultural Journals and Modern Arabic Literature: A Historical Overview”, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 2017, No. 37, (2017), pp. 9-49.

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.

Jacobi, Renate, “Ibn al-Muʿtazz: Dair ʿAbdūn. A Structural Analysis,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 6, 1975, 35-56.

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

Kendall, Elizabeth, Literature, Journalism and Avant-Garde, Intersection in Egypt London-New York, Routledge, 2006, 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.

Mandūr, Muḥammad, Fī al-mizān al-jadīd, Cairo: Dār Nahḍat Miṣr li-l-Ṭibāʿ wa-l-Nashr, 1971, sezioni scelte.

Mestyan, Adam, “Arabic Lexicography and European Aesthetics: The Origin of Fann.” In Muqarnas 28, 1, 2011, 69-100.

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.

al-Musawi, Muhsin Jassim, The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015, 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.

Sibilio, Simone, Poesia araba moderna e contemporanea, Roma: Pubblicazioni dell'Istituto per l'Oriente C. A. Nallino, 2022, sezioni scelte.

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.

al-Tami, Ahmed, ʻArabic Free Verse: The Problem of Terminologyʼ, in Journal of Arabic Literature, 24, 2, 1993, 185-198.

Module: “Rebel Arabic Literature from the 60s and 70s".

El-Enany, Rasheed, Naguib Maḥfūẓ: The Pursuit of Meaning (Arabic Thought and Culture), London and New York: Routledge, 1993, sezioni scelte.

Fontana, Chiara. 2019. Rhetorical Features of Cursing and Swearing in Contemporary Masters of Mujūn: Muẓaffar an-Nawwāb and Najīb Surūr. Romano-Arabica, 19, pp. 99-114.

Jacquemond, Richard, Conscience of the Nation, Cairo, The American University in Cairo Press, 2008, sezioni scelte.

Ramadan, Yasmine, ʻThe emergence of the Sixties Generation in Egyptʼ, in Journal of Arabic Literature, 43, 2-3, 2012, 409-30.

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.

Shukrī Ghālī, al-Muntamī: Dirāsāt fī Adab Najīb Maḥfūẓ, Cairo: Dār al-Ma‛ārif, sezioni scelte.

Excerpts (in Arabic)

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

Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Diwān Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Karam al-Bustānī [ed.], Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1965.

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

al-Malāʾika, Nāzik, Qaḍāyā al-shiʿr al-muʿāṣir, (1st ed. 1962), Beirut: Dār al-ʽIlm li-l-Malāyyīn, 2004, sezioni scelte.

Aḥmad Ḥasan, al-Zayyāt, Difāʽun ʽan al-balāgha, Cairo: ʽĀlam al-Kutub, (1st ed. 1945), 1967.

Muẓaffar al-Nawwāb, al-Aʽmāl al-shiʽriyya al-kāmila, London: Dār Qanbar.

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