Marlé Hammond
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197266687
- eISBN:
- 9780191905407
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266687.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter introduces the fictional tale by tracing its evolution from its unknown origins in what was probably the seventeenth century to its historicisation and Christianisation in the nineteenth ...
More
This chapter introduces the fictional tale by tracing its evolution from its unknown origins in what was probably the seventeenth century to its historicisation and Christianisation in the nineteenth century, to its infiltration of popular culture and the fine arts in the twentieth century. Its adaptations across various media, including literature, cinema and music, are explored. The chapter furthermore shows how the tale inscribes the endemic paradigms of the ʿUdhrī love narrative and the popular epic or sīra with the western model of the damsel-in-distress fairy tale. Finally, the chapter relates the process by which the tale becomes absorbed into Arabic culture to Yuri Lotman’s notion of the ‘boundary’ as the site of artistic innovation and the creation of new genres.Less
This chapter introduces the fictional tale by tracing its evolution from its unknown origins in what was probably the seventeenth century to its historicisation and Christianisation in the nineteenth century, to its infiltration of popular culture and the fine arts in the twentieth century. Its adaptations across various media, including literature, cinema and music, are explored. The chapter furthermore shows how the tale inscribes the endemic paradigms of the ʿUdhrī love narrative and the popular epic or sīra with the western model of the damsel-in-distress fairy tale. Finally, the chapter relates the process by which the tale becomes absorbed into Arabic culture to Yuri Lotman’s notion of the ‘boundary’ as the site of artistic innovation and the creation of new genres.
Marlé Hammond
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197266687
- eISBN:
- 9780191905407
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266687.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter represents a narratological breakdown of the tale. Drawing on the theory of Seymour Chatman, Mikhail Bakhtin and Georg Lukács, I discuss the tale and its relationship to the ʿUdhrī love ...
More
This chapter represents a narratological breakdown of the tale. Drawing on the theory of Seymour Chatman, Mikhail Bakhtin and Georg Lukács, I discuss the tale and its relationship to the ʿUdhrī love tale, the popular epic and the novel in terms of its discourse, setting, characters and events. I argue that the tale has a plot with a ‘homophonic’ texture, whereby a ‘melody’ of singular events (such as the abduction, torture and rescue of Laylā) overlays a ‘drone’ of repeated events (namely battle scenes). I conclude with a comparison of the tale with its twentieth-century novelistic adaptation and a discussion of what the comparison reveals about the pre-history of the Arabic novel.Less
This chapter represents a narratological breakdown of the tale. Drawing on the theory of Seymour Chatman, Mikhail Bakhtin and Georg Lukács, I discuss the tale and its relationship to the ʿUdhrī love tale, the popular epic and the novel in terms of its discourse, setting, characters and events. I argue that the tale has a plot with a ‘homophonic’ texture, whereby a ‘melody’ of singular events (such as the abduction, torture and rescue of Laylā) overlays a ‘drone’ of repeated events (namely battle scenes). I conclude with a comparison of the tale with its twentieth-century novelistic adaptation and a discussion of what the comparison reveals about the pre-history of the Arabic novel.
Marlé Hammond
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197266687
- eISBN:
- 9780191905407
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266687.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This book is a bilingual edition and study of a lengthy specimen of pre-modern Arabic storytelling. The tale’s origins are unknown but it probably dates from the seventeenth century. As a sustained ...
More
This book is a bilingual edition and study of a lengthy specimen of pre-modern Arabic storytelling. The tale’s origins are unknown but it probably dates from the seventeenth century. As a sustained fairy tale of the knight-in-shining-armour-rescues-damsel-in-distress variety, it reads as fiction and was probably intended as such. However, scholars in the Arab renaissance or Nahḍa received the text as history. Its pre-Islamic protagonists, ever emoting in verse, were thus celebrated as some of the earliest Arabic poets. The Arabic text featured in the monograph is sourced from five manuscripts and three published editions, and it is modelled on what I call the ‘Christian’ branch of the tale, or that version of the tale which identifies its hero as a Christian and which was promulgated by Christian scholars and literati in the nineteenth century. Two analytical chapters frame the tale: an introductory chapter which charts the evolution of the narrative and its cultural import through to the end of the twentieth century, and a concluding chapter that breaks the story down into its components and compares its structure to both the ʿUdhrī love tale and the popular epic or sīra, thereby situating the text as a hybrid precursor to the modern novel.Less
This book is a bilingual edition and study of a lengthy specimen of pre-modern Arabic storytelling. The tale’s origins are unknown but it probably dates from the seventeenth century. As a sustained fairy tale of the knight-in-shining-armour-rescues-damsel-in-distress variety, it reads as fiction and was probably intended as such. However, scholars in the Arab renaissance or Nahḍa received the text as history. Its pre-Islamic protagonists, ever emoting in verse, were thus celebrated as some of the earliest Arabic poets. The Arabic text featured in the monograph is sourced from five manuscripts and three published editions, and it is modelled on what I call the ‘Christian’ branch of the tale, or that version of the tale which identifies its hero as a Christian and which was promulgated by Christian scholars and literati in the nineteenth century. Two analytical chapters frame the tale: an introductory chapter which charts the evolution of the narrative and its cultural import through to the end of the twentieth century, and a concluding chapter that breaks the story down into its components and compares its structure to both the ʿUdhrī love tale and the popular epic or sīra, thereby situating the text as a hybrid precursor to the modern novel.
