STUDIES NEAR EASTERN-WESTERN LITERARY RELATIONS

With the pre-Islamic ode’s evocation of the past figured through the space of the abandoned campsite, place is a central organizing trope from the earliest poems of the Arabic literary canon onward. The Meccan surahs of the Qur’an are inextricably linked to the landscape of the desert.  As the modern novel rises in Egypt, the pastoral and narratives of urban dystopia are connected to larger frames of nationalist and ideological discourse. The rapid urbanization brought by the oil industry catalyzes new novelistic forms from Libya to the Gulf. In line with Franco Moretti’s assertion that geography is an active force that shapes both the wider literary field and discrete narrative structures, this course will address the issue of space in Arabic literature and the Arabic literary text’s position in historical space. Primary readings will include al-Hamadhani, al-Saraqusti, Ibn Khaldoun, Abdelrahman Munif, Yahya Taher Abdallah, Idris Ali, Hassouna Mosbahi, Ibrahim al-Koni, and Mahmoud Darwish with critical readings taken from spatial theory, cultural geography, urban studies and ecocriticism. In keeping with this course’s concern for the intersection of geography and text, students will produce their own mapped visualization of a text(s) which will form the basis for analysis in their final papers.