Awards
- Winner of Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies 2020
Overview
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 Chraibi) into conversation with lesser-known Arabophone ones (Mahmud al-Mas'adi, al-Tahir Wattar, Muhammad Barrada). Theorizing the Qur'an as a literary object, process, and model, this interdisciplinary study blends literary and theological methodologies, conceptual vocabularies, and reading practices.
Full Product Details
Author: Hoda El Shakry
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Imprint: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 9780823286362
ISBN 10: 0823286363
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 03 December 2019
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
The Literary Qur'an provides an exceptionally rich framework for considering how religion informs the reading of North African literature. With agility and grace, the book presents clear arguments, imaginative readings, and pathways for teaching, thinking, and reflecting on these literary novels. * Michael Allan, University of Oregon *
The Literary Qur'an provides an exceptionally rich framework for considering how religion informs the reading of North African literature. With agility and grace, the book presents clear arguments, imaginative readings, and pathways for teaching, thinking, and reflecting on these literary novels. * Michael Allan, University of Oregon *
"A pioneering undertaking that has much to offer to scholars and students of modern Maghreb and Arabic literature, Hoda El Shakry's The Literary Qur'an: Narrative Ethics in the Maghreb provides a model for future research in the field... El Shakry has enriched the Arabic library and the library of comparative and world literature with a spirited book that is well-written, timely, and original.-- ""Journal of Arabic Literature"" The Literary Qur'an provides an exceptionally rich framework for considering how religion informs the reading of North African literature. With agility and grace, the book presents clear arguments, imaginative readings, and pathways for teaching, thinking, and reflecting on these literary novels.-- ""Michael Allan, University of Oregon"""
Author Information
Hoda El Shakry is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago.
