Islam and New Directions in World Literature

by Sarah R. Bin Tyeer (Editor), Claire Gallien (Editor), Jeffrey Einboden (Foreword by)

Overview

Since its advent, Islam has been a representational force to be reckoned with, cross-pollinating world literatures in Africa, Europe, Asia, the Pacific Ocean and the Americas. Yet, scholarship on Islam in world literatures has been sparse despite its significant presence. This book understands Islamic literary and cultural heritages as dynamic forces, constantly enriched and enlivened by various humanistic traditions in multiple languages, spanning the lives of individuals and societies throughout history. It is also designed to incorporate a variety of themes, influences, ramifications and representations of Islam in world literatures in classical and contemporary contexts.
Exploring Islam’s presence in world literatures in two strands: on the one hand, examining the orientalist versions and usages of Islam; and on the other hand, analysing the presence of Islam as Islamicate, this book advances a consideration of Islam as an agent in the history of World Literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474484060
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	08/15/2024
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Sarah Bin Tyeer is Assistant Professor in the Department of Middle East, South Asian and Africa Studies at Columbia University. She is the author of The Qur’an and the Aesthetics of Pre-modern Arabic Prose (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Claire Gallien is Senior Lecturer in English at UniversityPaul Valéry-Montpellier III. She is She is author of L'orient anglais (Oxford UniversityStudies in the Enlightenment/Liverpool UP, 2011) and co-editor (with Ladan Niayesh) of Eastern Resonances in Early Modern England: Receptions and Transformations from the Renaissance to the Romantic Period (New York: Palgrave, 2019).

Jeffrey Einboden (Ph.D, Cambridge) is Associate Professor of American Literature at Northern Illinois University. His research has appeared in Translation and Literature, Milton Quarterly, Middle Eastern Literatures, Journal of Qur’anic Studies, and the co-translated The Tangled Braid: Ninety-Nine Poems by Hafiz of Shiraz (Fons Vitae, 2009). Einboden’s ‘The Genesis of Weltliteratur’ (Literature and Theology, 2005) was named one of the 100 seminal articles published by Oxford UniversityPress during the past century.

Table of Contents

Foreword - Jeffrey Einboden (Northern Illinois University)

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgments

1. The World Imaginaires of Islam: Islam and New Directions in World Literature - Sarah R. Bin Tyeer (Columbia University) & Claire Gallien (Universityé Paul Valéry - Montpellier 3)

Tropes of Orientalism

2. Los moros de la hueste: Recovering the Islamicate in the Goths’ Lament - Gregory Hutcheson (University of Louisville)

3. Just One Word - Gil Anidjar (Columbia University)

Sensory Fluctuations: Aural, Oral, Visual, and Written

4. Poems in Praise of the Prophet (madīḥ) as a Citizen of the Literary World - Walid Ghali (Aga Khan University)

5. The Place and Function of Imagination in Fulani Mystical Poetry (Massina, Mali) - Christiane Seydou (CNRS-Paris)

6. Vanishing Art, Genre-making: The Uyghur Storytelling Tradition and its Heritagization - Musapir

Circulation,Translation, Rereading

7. Friedrich Rückert’s Understanding of Islam and Poetic Translation of the Qur’ân - Georges Tamer (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg) and Cüneyd Yıldırım (Münster Universityät)

8. The "Islamic" Arabian Nights in World Imaginaries - Muhsin al-Musawi (Columbia University)

9. Where is World Literature? - Hamid Dabashi (Columbia University)

Secular/Non-Secular

10. Praising the Prophet Muhammad in Chinese. A New translation and Analysis of Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang’s Ode to the Prophet - Haiyun Ma (Frostburg State University) and Brendan Newlon (Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC)

11. A Fine Romance: Translating the Qissah as World Romance - Pasha M. Khan (McGill University)

12. Indonesia’s "Sastra Profetik" As Decolonial Literary Theory - Nazry Bahrawi (University of Washington)

Editorial Reviews

An Islamicate turn in world literature? Introduced in the 1970s, Islamicate never seemed likely as a descriptor supplanting Muslim and Islamic, but its ascent now seems imminent due to this sparkling collection of essays, from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, with fresh insight and apt analysis in every chapter.

Bruce B. Lawrence

Like the regions of the map on this book's cover, the places the contributors take us to have long been there but have remained largely uncharted—until now. By bringing together important interventions on the world literature of Islam, Bin Tyeer and Gallien are showing— and leading—the way.

Professor Shawkat Toorawa