Since the late 1940s, Arabic poetry has spoken for an Arab conscience, as much as it has debated positions and ideologies, nationally and worldwide. This book tackles issues of modernity and tradition in Arabic poetry as manifested in poetic texts and criticism by poets as participants in transformation and change.
Arabic Poetry studies the poetic in its complexity as pertaining to issues of:
- Selfhood - Individuality , - Community , - Religion , - Ideology , - Nation , - Class and , - Gender
This book also studies in context, issues that have been cursorily noticed or neglected, like Shi’i poetics, Sufism, women’s poetry, and expressions of exilic consciousness. It employs current literary theory and provides comprehensive coverage of modern and postmodern poetry from the 1950s onwards. Arabic Poetry is essential reading for those with interests in Arabic culture and literature and Middle East studies.
Muhsin J. al-Musawi is Professor of Middle East and Asian Studies at Columbia University and University Professor at the American University of Sharjah. He has published 24 books in English and Arabic, including Scheherazade in England and The Postcolonial Arabic Novel. He is the editor of Journal of Arabic Literature. In 2002 he received the Owais Award in literary criticism, the most prestigious nongovernmental award in the Arab world. |