The City in Arabic Literature: Classical and Modern Perspectives

The theme and motif of the city has had an enduring presence in the Arabic-Islamic tradition, from the classical and post-classical literary corpus to modern and post-colonial Arabic poetry and prose. Cities such as Mecca, Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Beirut, Qayrawan, Marrakesh and Cordoba have served as virtual (battle)grounds for some of the Arab world's most complex intellectual, sociocultural, and political issues. The Arab city has been transformed from a mere physical structure and textual space into an (auto)biographical, novelistic, and poetic arena--often troubled and contested--for debating the encounter, competition and conflict between the rural and the urban, the traditional and the modern, the meditative and the satiric, the individual and the communal, and the Self and Other(s).

Author: Nizar F. Hermes
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: 11/27/2019
Pages: 360
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9781474455824

About the Author

Nizar F. Hermes is Assistant Professor of Arabic Literature and Culture at the University of Virginia. He is author of The [European] Other in Medieval Arabic Literature and Culture, Ninth-Twelfth Century AD (2012).

Gretchen Head is Assistant Professor of Literature in the Humanities Division at Yale-NUS College in Singapore.