Oriental Languages

Nachtigallen an Gottes Thron

Studien zur persischen Dichtung

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To date, only a few pioneers have made classical Persian poetry and philosophy accessible to the occidental eye. During the 17th and 18th centuries, influential travellers brought goods, travelogues and translations back from Persia. Around 1800, enthusiasm for the oriental …

Writing as Re-enchantment: The Arabic and Turkish Novel’s Neo-Sufi Response to Secular Modernity

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This study examines the revival of Sufism in the Arabic and Turkish novel during the second half of the 20th century. A picture is drawn where Sufism forms a main source of literary inspiration and becomes a mode to establish …

The Maqāmāt of Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī

Authorship, Texts, and Contexts

Through investigations of manuscripts, this book explores important aspects of the life of Badîʿ al-Zamân al-Hamadhânî’s Maqâmât. The broad concerns of the book are divided into three sections: authorship, texts, and contexts. Each chapter in this volume investigates hitherto unstudied …

Oscillating Bodies

Understanding Tunisian Society through its Novels (1956-2011)

Oscillating Bodies reads together the depiction of human bodies in arabophone and francophone Tunisian novels. This produces an understanding of Tunisian society from the country’s independence in 1956 until the revolutionary upheavals of 2010/2011. It appears as a society that …

Ein leises Geräusch wie ein Gefühl des Sehnens

Dichtung und Zeugenschaft zum faschistischen Konzentrationslager in Libia Coloniale

Arabic poetry about the Italian concentration camps in Libia Coloniale is often understood primarily as a historical source, thereby neglecting the poems' literary merits. A Soft Sound, Like a Feeling of Longing approaches these poems from a literary theoretical perspective …

Vorgestellte Öffentlichkeit

Zur Genese moderner Prosa in Ägypten (1860 bis 1908)

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This socio-literary study examines the relationship between processes of modernisation and reform, and new literary genres produced in Egypt of the second half of the 19th century. How did heterogenous modern literary forms emerge in this particular environment, and what …

Arabische Romantik im Exil

Das poetische Werk des Fauzi al-Ma‘luf

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Thanks to his cycle of poems On the carpet of the wind, the Lebanese writer Fawzī al-Ma ͑lūf (1899−1930) is considered one of the most outstanding representatives of Arabic romantic poetry in Latin American exile. This study undertakes a dual …

Die Messingstadt

Eine Erzählung aus „Tausendundeiner Nacht“. Architektur einer Heiligwerdung

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Anyone associating The Arabian Nights with erotic stories will doubtlessly be disappointed when reading “City of Brass” (Nights 566−578). This tale deals not with the lust for life but, on the contrary, with the vanity of existence: Each individual who …

Conflicting Narratives: War, Trauma and Memory in Iraqi Culture

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This volume deals with the Iraqi cultural production under and after Baathist rule, a research field which, in comparison to Iraqi history and politics, has attracted relatively scant scholarly attention. The contributors depict the impact of dictatorship, sanctions, and successive …

Reading Across Modern Arabic Literature and Art

Three Case Studies: Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Abd al-Rahman Munif, Etel Adnan

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Interrelations of literature and art, word and image, are manifold. However, they have remained largely unexplored when it comes to literature and art in the Arab world. This book aims at introducing interarts studies to Middle Eastern studies and, at …

Palästinensische Autobiographien

Unsere Situation schuf unsere Erinnerungen

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The history of Palestine is one written by others, Roman and Arab conquerors, Ottoman and British rulers, and today a Zionist shadow looms. As if finally realizing that claims to territory demand a claim to history, following the defeat of …

Sehnsucht nach Sinn

Literarische Semantisierung von Geschichte im zeitgenössischen türkischen Roman

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Towards the end of the 20th century a new interest in the Ottoman and Seljuk past crystallized in Turkish fiction. In the process, not only an array of aspects connected with the “official”, heroic-nationalist version of history were subjected to …

Muhammad Iqbal’s Romanticism of Power

A Post-Structural Approach to His Persian Lyrical Poetry

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A study of the Persian poetry of Muḥammad Iqbāl (1877-1938), today Pakistan’s national poet, this work identifies the position his poems occupied between tradition and modernity, specifying the appeal they held for his contemporaries. Drawing on structural text analysis, the …

Martyrdom in Literature

Visions of Death and Meaningful Suffering in Europe and the Middle East from Antiquity to Modernity

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This book aims to achieve a deeper understanding of the very human phenomenon of martyrdom by analysing in detail its highly varied re-enactments in European and Middle Eastern literatures. Despite its divergent historical, religious, philosophical or political circumstances, there does …

Writers and Rulers

Perspectives on Their Relationship from Abbasid to Safavid Times

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Nine essays explore the ways in which individual Arabic and Persian authors between the 9th and 17th centuries (with examples drawn from the Abbasid to the Safavid dynasties) chose rulers and other political leaders as the recipients for their writings, …

Crossings and Passages in Genre and Culture

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Crossings and Passages in Genre and Culture scrutinizes the fascinating and diverse wanderings forms of artistic expression, in particular literature, have taken through different cultural fields, both within and outside a specific geographical region or historical époque. Approaching the topic …

Brückenschläge

Eine integrierte »turkoarabische« Romangeschichte (Mitte 19. bis Mitte 20. Jahrhundert)

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Brückenschläge (Building Bridges) is the first detailed and systematic comparison of two modern Middle Eastern literatures, taking the novel genre as a paradigm. The study’s synoptic approach challenges, and gets past, the concept of Arabic resp. Turkish “national literatures”, outlining …

Crisis and Memory

The Representation of Space in Modern Levantine Narrative

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This volume explores the literary representation of social and political crises that have punctuated the second half of the 20th century in the Middle East. From the creation of the state of Israel and its continuing aftermath, to the Suez …

Jesus, Joseph and Job

Reading Rescriptings of Religious Figures in Lebanese Women’s Fiction

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Joseph, Jesus and Job are all immediately recognizable religious figures in both Christianity and Islam who have been incorporated into a range of artistic and literary projects both inside and outside the Arab world. This study examines how three Lebanese …

Gestalten durch Verbergen

Ghassan Salhabs melancholischer Blick auf Beirut in Film, Video und Dichtung

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This volume is the first comprehensive, across-media study of the work of the Lebanese film auteur Ghassan Salhab. His oeuvre emerges in a conceptual environment shaped by a crisis of representation. It is examined not only in its confrontation with …