The City in Arabic Literature : : Classical and Modern Perspectives / / Nizar F. Hermes, Gretchen Head.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Edinburgh University Press Complete eBook-Package 2018
• VerfasserIn: Hermes, Nizar F. ,; Head, Gretchen,
• MitwirkendeR: Anishchenkova, Valerie,; Cruz, Anna,; Fakhreddine, Huda,; Hayek, Ghenwa,; Head, Gretchen,; Hermes, Nizar,; Hutchins, William,; Khaldi, Boutheina,; Munt, Harry,; Orfali, Bilal,; Ramadan, Yasmine,; Rossetti, Chip,; Salama, Mohammad,; Samman, Hanadi,; Talib, Adam,; Tuttle, Kelly,; Tyeer, Sarah,
• Place / Publishing House: Edinburgh : : Edinburgh University Press, , [2022]; ©2018
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (360 p.) :; 7 B/W illustrations 7 B/W line art

Addresses the literary representation and cultural interpretation of the city in Arabic literatureShows how the city has been explored in works of literature by classical and modern ‘Arab’ authors from different theosophical and ideological backgroundsViews the entirety of the tradition as an evolving continuum, making the collection relevant to scholars of both classical and modern Arabic literatureCovers the central literary genres from the classical period associated with the city, including elegy, eulogy, invective, nostalgic discourses and historiographical accountsChapters on the modern period focus on ideas such as the role played by writing the city in the Moroccan nahdah, everyday writing practices in Beirut and the contradictions and tensions in current literary depictions of the globalized cities of MENAIncludes chapters on many of the most important cities from the medieval and the modern Arab world in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and al-AndalusThe theme and motif of the city has had an enduring presence in the Arabic-Islamic tradition, from the classical and post-classical literary corpus to modern and post-colonial Arabic poetry and prose. Cities such as Mecca, Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Beirut, Qayrawan, Marrakesh and Cordoba have served as virtual (battle)grounds for some of the Arab world's most complex intellectual, sociocultural, and political issues. The Arab city has been transformed from a mere physical structure and textual space into an (auto)biographical, novelistic, and poetic arena—often troubled and contested—for debating the encounter, competition and conflict between the rural and the urban, the traditional and the modern, the meditative and the satiric, the individual and the communal, and the Self and Other(s).

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Preface -- 1. The Untranslatability of the Qurʾānic City -- 2. Local Historians and their Cities: the Urban Topography of al-Azdī’s Mosul and al-Sahmī’s Jurjan -- 3. Against Cities: On Hijāʾ al-Mudun in Arabic Poetry -- 4. The Literary Geography of Meaning in the Maqāmāt of al-Hamadhānī and al-Óarīrī -- 5. “Woe is me for Qayrawan!” Ibn Sharaf ’s Lāmiyya, the Plight of Refugees and the Cityscape -- 6. In Memory of al-Andalus: Using the Elegy to Reimagine the Literary and Literal Geography of Cordoba -- 7. The Mamluk City as Overlapping Personal Networks -- 8. Citystruck -- 9. Between Utopia and Dystopia in Marrakech -- 10. Revolutionary Cityscapes: Yūsuf Idrīs and the National Imaginary -- 11. Lost Cities, Vanished Worlds: Configurations of Urban Autobiographical Identity in the Arabic Literature of the 1980s -- 12. The Sufis of Baghdad: A Topographical Index of the City -- 13. Ba‚rayātha: Self-portrait as a City -- 14. Of Cities and Canons in an Age of Comparative Consumption -- 15. Everyday Writing in an Extraordinary City -- 16. Translating Cairo’s Hidden Lines: The City as Visual Text in Magdy El Shafee’s Metro -- About the Contributors -- Index