Realms of Strangers: Readers, Language, and Trickery in Maqāmāt al-Ḥarīrī
By (author) Asmaa Essakouti
Hardback (Published)
(January 2025)
ISBN: 9783752007930
6.69 x 9.45 inches
Price: $103.50
In stock
Literatures in Context is a peer-reviewed book series devoted to Near Eastern and North African literatures. The editors want the title of the series to be understood programmatically. They presuppose a concept of world literature that includes Near Eastern and North African literatures. What is more, they assume that literatures are in many ways marked by intertextuality, that they constitute readings of extremely diverse earlier texts, and that they are posited within a field of tensions, much broader than their respective national language. For the earlier eras of Near Eastern and North African literatures, this field of tensions geographically covers the regions of the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor. In modern times, it has become a space of interaction that has long since included “global” Western literatures (and realities). This does not imply that the modern Near Eastern and North African literatures have severed themselves from their predecessors. Instead it is precisely the tension between different sets of references in modern Near Eastern and North African literatures, or their “local historical context”, which is a great part of their attraction, that remains a crucial field of research for the modern scholar.
The Maqamat of Hariri features an intellectual pursuing a trickster to collect his rare words, sophisticated compositions, and curious accounts. Writing against the grain of modernist and Orientalist readings, Essakouti argues that strangeness in both language and space is the key to this forgotten classic, which makes it worth reading also today. Only a stranger (gharib) who comes from a distant land can fulfill the audience’s obsessive desire for curiosities, wondrous accounts, and exotic vocabulary (gharib), which always exists elsewhere.
- By (author) Asmaa Essakouti
Other Titles in this Series
Die Entblößung der Wörter
aš-Šidyāqs literarische Listen als Kultur- und Gesellschaftskritik im 19. Jahrhundert
Gestalten durch Verbergen
Ghassan Salhabs melancholischer Blick auf Beirut in Film, Video und Dichtung
Brückenschläge
Eine integrierte »turkoarabische« Romangeschichte (Mitte 19. bis Mitte 20. Jahrhundert)
Erzählte Tradition
Historische und literarische Figuren im Werk von Zakariya Tamir. Eine narratologische Analyse
Reading Across Modern Arabic Literature and Art
Three Case Studies: Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Abd al-Rahman Munif, Etel Adnan
Similar Books
Ars Prophetica
Theology in the Poetry of Twentieth-Century Hebrew Poets Avraham Halfi, Shin Shalom, Amir Gilboa, and T. Carmi
Cities through Time
Glimpses into Urbanity and Community in Mediaeval to Modern West Asia and Egypt
Volume 1
Global Gulf
Geo-Economic, Geo-Political, and Geo-Technological Transformation in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar
Ismail Hakki Bursevi’s translation of and commentary on Fusus al-Hikam By Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi
Volumes 1-4
Punning in Odd or Elegant Constructions in Jeremiah
The Convergence of Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Textuality in the Hebrew Text of Jeremiah
Qatar’s Societal Security
Towards the Inclusive National Concept of ‘Baladna’ Identity, Migration and External Threats Since 2017
Writing of Women as Cultural Resistance
Deconstructing Memory Legacies in the Afro-Luso-Brazilian Atlantic
Althochdeutsche Stabreimdichtungen
Hildebrandslied, Muspilli und kleinere Denkmaler. Von Grund auf neu ediert, mit Erschliessungshilfen versehen, ubersetzt und eingeleitet von Frank Schafer
Networking through Biography
Constructing Intellectual Junctions in Antiquity, the Renaissance and the Arabo-Islamic World
Volume 19
