The literary Qur'an : narrative ethics in the Maghreb / Hoda El Shakry.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

El Shakry, Hoda, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Arabic literature--Africa, North--History and criticism.

Arabic literature.

North African literature (French)--History and criticism.

North African literature (French).

Qurʼan as literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (205 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2020.

Summary:

Winner, 2020 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies, Modern Language Association The novel, the literary adage has it, reflects a world abandoned by God. Yet the possibilities of novelistic form and literary exegesis exceed the secularizing tendencies of contemporary literary criticism. Showing how the Qur?an itself invites and enacts critical reading, Hoda El Shakry's Qur?anic model of narratology enriches our understanding of literary sensibilities and practices in the Maghreb across Arabophone and Francophone traditions. The Literary Qur?an mobilizes the Qur?an's formal, narrative, and rhetorical qualities, alongside embodied and hermeneutical forms of Qur?anic pedagogy, to theorize modern Maghrebi literature. Challenging the canonization of secular modes of reading that occlude religious epistemes, practices, and intertexts, it attends to literature as a site where the process of entextualization obscures ethical imperatives. Engaging with the Arab-Islamic tradition of adab -a concept demarcating the genre of belles lettres, as well as social and moral comportment-El Shakry demonstrates how the critical pursuit of knowledge is inseparable from the spiritual cultivation of the self.Foregrounding form and praxis alike, The Literary Qur?an stages a series of pairings that invite paratactic readings across texts, languages, and literary canons. The book places twentieth-century novels by canonical Francophone writers (Abdelwahab Meddeb, Assia Djebar, Driss Chraïbi) into conversation with lesser-known Arabophone ones (Ma?m?d al-Mas?ad?, al-??hir Wa???r, Mu?ammad Barr?da). Theorizing the Qur?an as a literary object, process, and model, this interdisciplinary study blends literary and theological methodologies, conceptual vocabularies, and reading practices.

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Preface: The Ethics of Reading

Introduction: The Qurʼan as (Inter)text: Embodiment, Praxis, Critique

Part I. Poetics of Piety: 1. Existential Poiesis in Maḥmūd al-Masʻadī's Mawlid al-nisyān

2. Carnivals of Heterodoxy in Abdelwahab Meddeb's Talismano

Part II. Ethics of Embodiment: 3. Apocalyptic Aftershocks in al-Ṭāhir Waṭṭār's Al-zilzāl

4. The Polyphonic Hermeneutics of Assia Djebar's L'amour, la fantasia

Part III. Genealogies of Transmission: 5. Tense Eruptions in Driss Chraïbi's Le passé simple

6. Threads of Transmission in Muḥammad Barrāda's Luʻbat al-nisyān

Epilogue: Poetics, Politics, Piety

Glossary

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780823288915

0823288919

9780823286379

0823286371