Arabic Thresholds: Sites of Rhetorical Turn in Contemporary Scholarship edited by Muhsin J. al-Musawi

Year 2013, Volume: 4 Issue: 2, 262 - 266, 12.06.2014

Amidu Olalekan Sanni

https://doi.org/10.12730/13091719.2013.42.89

Abstract

First paragraph: This is a felicitation volume (Festschrift) whose contents originally appeared as articles in two issues of the Journal of Arabic Literature (38/3 [2007] and 39/1 [2008]) in honor of Jaroslav Stetkevych, the iconic scholar of Arabic studies and critical thoughts. These contributions by friends, colleagues, and old students, which are underlined by a common subscription to the doctrine of a rhetorical shift in the humanities and dialogue with social science methodologies, cover the wide spectrum of Stetkevych’s intellectual interests. These include advocacy for a review of old ‘Orientalism,’ classical Arabic literary tradition, Andalusian poetry, Francophone literature, translation, the nexus between architecture and poetry, Sufism, and comparative studies. These are the subject matters covered in this volume. Roger Allen (pp. 1-15) identifies some of the principal issues which are involved in the parameters for periodizing the Arabic literary history as applied to the Arabic novel. The confusion over placing the ‘crude’ or informal antecedents into the category of formal narrative categories is mentioned as a key problem. In his view, the nature of generic change which has come to pass since the 19th century has not been fully digested by the scholarly community in its attitude towards modernity, hence the inability, if not the failure to classify rightly, the fictional writings of the pre-Modern period. Allen therefore calls for a different approach to the fictional writings of that period in light of current trends.

Arabic Thresholds: Sites of Rhetorical Turn in Contemporary Scholarship edited by Muhsin J. al-Musawi

Abstract

First paragraph:
This is a felicitation volume (Festschrift) whose contents originally appeared as articles in two issues of the Journal of Arabic Literature (38/3 [2007] and 39/1 [2008]) in honor of Jaroslav Stetkevych, the iconic scholar of Arabic studies and critical thoughts. These contributions by friends, colleagues, and old students, which are underlined by a common subscription to the doctrine of a rhetorical shift in the humanities and dialogue with social science methodologies, cover the wide spectrum of Stetkevych’s intellectual interests. These include advocacy for a review of old ‘Orientalism,’ classical Arabic literary tradition, Andalusian poetry, Francophone literature, translation, the nexus between architecture and poetry, Sufism, and comparative studies. These are the subject matters covered in this volume. Roger Allen (pp. 1-15) identifies some of the principal issues which are involved in the parameters for periodizing the Arabic literary history as applied to the Arabic novel. The confusion over placing the ‘crude’ or informal antecedents into the category of formal narrative categories is mentioned as a key problem. In his view, the nature of generic change which has come to pass since the 19th century has not been fully digested by the scholarly community in its attitude towards modernity, hence the inability, if not the failure to classify rightly, the fictional writings of the pre-Modern period. Allen therefore calls for a different approach to the fictional writings of that period in light of current trends.

Keywords

Arabic Thresholds, Muhsin J. al-Musawi, Orientalism