Emerging Subjectivity in the Long 19th-Century Middle East : Philological Approaches.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Guth, Stephan.

Series:

Studies on Modern Orient Series

Studies on Modern Orient Series ; v.51

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (518 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berlin/Boston : Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2024.

Summary:

This volume revisits the “long 19th century” in the Middle East from the perspective of emerging subjectivity as a fundamentally new attitude of the individual vis-à-vis the World. Stephan Guth’s holistic vision interprets emerging subjectivity as the key operator at the heart of the many aspects of the so-called Arab(ic) “Renaissance” (and corresponding movements in Turkish), like rationalism, critical analysis, political emancipation, reformism, moralism, and emotionalism, but also a new language, new genres, and new concepts. Guth’s thoroughly philological approach demonstrates how a close reading of literary texts from the period, a cultural-psychological interpretation of linguistic phenomena and an etymology-informed look into conceptual terminology can contribute to a deeper understanding of what “modernisation” actually meant, deep inside the human beings’ mind and psyche, in their meeting with a rapidly changing world. Twenty essays on language, literature, and key concepts reflect the author’s life-long engagement with the culture of the period in question. The articles are glued together by a guiding narrative that assigns each treated aspect its place in the author’s vision (which includes a global perspective).

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Part I: Background / Settings

1 Arab perspectives on the late Ottoman Empire

2 The simultaneity of the non-simultaneous

Part II: Linguistic aspects The language of the Nahḍa

3 Morpho-semantic evidence of emerging subjectivity in the language of the Nahḍa

Part III: Transitions: Continuity and rupture New attitudes / genres in the making

4 Adab as the art to make the right choice between local tradition and Western values: A comparative analysis of Khalīl al-Khūrī’s Way, idhan lastu bi-Ifranjī! (1859) and Aḥmed Midḥat’s Felāṭūn Beğ ile Rāḳım Efendī (1875)

5 Concepts that changed the world

6 What does it mean to design a plot?

7 From water-carrying camels to modern storytellers

Part IV: The emerging subject seeking to assert itself

8 Even in a maqāma! The shift of focus from “trickster” to “narrating subject” in Fāris al-Shidyāq’s al-Sāq ʿalà l-sāq (1855)

9 The modern subject sensing its agency

10 “Wa-hākadhā kāna ka-Iblīs”: Satan and social reform in a novel by Salīm al-Bustānī (Bint al-ʿaṣr, 1875)

11 “Fa-ghrawraqat ʿuyūnuhum bi-l-dumūʿ...”: Some notes on the flood of tears in early modern Arabic fiction

Part V: The Nahḍa at its zenith Nation building and “Yes, we can!” enthusiasm

12 A manifesto of early adab qawmī: ʿĪsà ʿUbayd’s programmatic preface to “Miss Ihsan” – Introduction and translation

13 Maḥmūd Taymūr (1894–1973)

14 The Modern School and global modernity: The example of an Egyptian ghost story of the mid-1920s (Maḥmūd Ṭāhir Lāshīn’s Qiṣṣat ʿifrīt

15 Aspects of literary representation in Reşat Nuri Güntekin’s Çalıkuşu

Part VI: From “upswing” to crisis and demise: 100 years of Middle Eastern modernity – Thematic threads

16 From the discovery of the “independent self” to its crisis: A condensed literary history of the agency of the subject in Middle Eastern modernity

17 Fading trust in the Nahḍa: Three Middle Eastern utopias

Part VII: Turkish parallels

18 The ‘riddle’ ʿAşḳ-ı memnūʿ: Towards assigning the S̱ervet-i Fünūn movement a place in literary history

19 Early national literature in Turkey: Some authors and their novels

Bibliography

Publication history and acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9783111350837

3111350835

OCLC:

1438671275