Featured Resources
- The International Prize for Arabic Fiction The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) is the most prestigious and important literary prize in the Arab world. Its aim is to reward excellence in contemporary Arabic creative writing and to encourage the readership of high quality Arabic literature internationally through the translation and publication of winning and shortlisted novels in other major languages.
Emerging Arab Voices: Nadwa I by
"This is a well chosen collection of some of the best Arab writers I've come across, with a broad spectrum of themes, well chosen and beautifully rendered into English."--Raja Shehadeh, author ofPalestinian Walks In November 2009, the International Prize for Arabic Fiction organized a workshop for eight critically acclaimed writers from Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates. This bilingual volume brings together the pieces produced during this workshop, showcasing the creativity of a younger generation of Arab writers. A range of styles and themes are explored: from Egyptian social realism to a tale from the deserts of Darfur, a grim Tunisian allegory, family drama in Saudi Arabia, and a story about home and exile in Sana'a. Includes a foreword co-written by Inaam Kachachi, an Iraqi born writer whose debut novelThe American Granddaughterwas shortlisted for the 2008-2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and the Lebanese author Jabbour Douaihy, whose novelJune Rain was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2007-2008. Peter Clark is a Middle East specialist, a trustee of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and a contributing editor ofBanipal. He has translated fiction, history, drama, and poetry from Arabic since 1980.
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ7694.E8 E44 2010Publication Date: 2011
Islam on the Street: : Religion in Modern Arabic Literature by
Islam on the Street deals with the popular side of Islam, as described not only in tracts and manuals written by Sufi shaykhs and Islamist thinkers from among the more militant groups in Islam, but also in writings by other, more secular thinkers who have also influenced public opinion. A scholar of Arabic literature, Muhsin al-Musawi explains the growing rift that has occurred between the secular intellectual--the forerunner of Arab and Islamic modernity since the late nineteenth century--and the upsurge of Islamic fervor in the street, at the grassroots level, and what these secular intellectuals can do to reconnect with the masses. Using some of the most important Arabic and Islamic poetry, prose, and fiction to come out of the twentieth century, Al-Musawi provides context for the complex images of Arab and Islamic culture given by the various social, religious, and political groups, providing the motivations. Readers interested in the influence of religion and secularism within modern Islamic Arabic literature will find that the author addresses the presence of Islam and Sufism in ways that secular commentators have been incapable of doing.
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ7519.I84 M87 2009 and OnlinePublication Date: 2009
Guides to Arabic Literature
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An Introduction to Arabic Literature by
Roger Allen provides a comprehensive introductory survey of literary texts in Arabic, from their unknown beginnings in the fifth century AD to the present. The volume focuses on the major genres of Arabic literature, dealing with Islam's sacred text, the Qur'an, and a wealth of poetry, narrative prose, drama and criticism. Allen reveals the continuities that link the creative output of the present day to the illustrious literary heritage of the past and incorporates an enormously rich body of popular literature typified most famously by The Arabian Nights. The volume is informed by Western critical approaches, but within each chapter the emphasis is on the texts themselves, with extensive quotations in English translation. Reference features include a chronology and a guide to further reading. A revised and abridged version of Allen's acclaimed study, The Arabic Literary Heritage, this book provides an invaluable student introduction to a major non-Western literary tradition.
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ7510 .A43 2000 and OnlinePublication Date: 2000
Modern Arabic Literature in Translation: A Companion by
This indispensible guide to modern Arabic literature in English translation features not only a comprehensive bibliography but also chapters on fiction, drama, poetry, and autobiography, as well as a special chapter on Iraq's Arabic literature. By focusing on Najib Mahfuz, one of Arabic Literature's luminaries, and on poetry--a major, if not the major genre of the region-- Altoma assesses the progress made towards a wider reception of Arabic writing throughout the western world.
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ7538 .A358 2005Publication Date: 2005
Iraq's Modern Arabic Literature: a guide to English translations since 1950 by
Covering 60 years of materials, this bibliography cites translations, studies, and other writings, which represent Iraq's national literature, including recent works of numerous Iraqi writers living in Western exile. The volume serves as a guide to three interrelated data: o Translations that have appeared since 1950, as books or as individual items (poems, short stories, novel extracts, plays, diaries) in print-and non-print publications in Iraq and other Arab and English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. o Relevant studies and other secondary sources including selected reviews and author interviews, which cover Iraqi literature and writers. o The scope of displacement or dispersion of Iraqi writers, artists, and other intellectuals who have been uprooted and are now living in exile in Arab or other Western countries. By drawing attention to a largely overlooked but relevant and extensive literature accessible in English, this first of its kind book will serve as an invaluable guide to students of contemporary Iraq, modern Arabic literature, and other fields such as women's studies, postcolonial studies, third world literature, American-Arab/Muslim Relations, and Diaspora studies.
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ8043.5.E5 A48 2010 and OnlinePublication Date: 2010
Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period by
Originally published in 1983, The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature was the first general survey of the field to have been published in English for over fifty years and the first attempted in such detail in a multi-volume form. The volumes of the History provide an invaluable source of reference and understanding of the intellectual, literary and religious heritage of the Arabic-speaking and Islamic world. This volume begins its coverage with the oral verse of the sixth century AD, and ends with the fall of the Umayyad dynasty two centuries later. Within this period fall major events: the life of the Prophet Muhammad, the founding of the Islamic religion, the great Arab Islamic conquests of territories outside the Arabian Peninsula, and their meeting, as overlords, with the Byzantine and Sasanian world. Contributors to this volume discuss an array of topics including the influences of Greeks, Persians and Syrians on early Arabic literature.
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ7510 .A8 1983Publication Date: 1983
A Short History of Modern Arabic Literature by
This is a concise and authoritative survey of the whole of modern Arabic literature since the mid-19th century with a view to helping the general reader as well as the student to form a clear picture of the literary achievements of the modern Arabs. the drive for modernization, which startedin Egypt and Syria early in the 19th century and which gradually spread to the rest of the Arab world, resulted in the introduction of secular education, printing, journalism, and much translation of western thought and literature. Consequently, a new reading public and a new conception ofliterature emerged. Inspired by rising nationalism and the conflict between Islam and westernization, writers sought to reflect and indeed change social and political reality, instead of merely displaying their verbal skill. This book examines the attempts made by Arab authors to define thiscultural identity and meet the needs of the modern world by adapting the imported forms of the novel, short story, and drama, as well as their indigenous poetic and prose tradition.
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ7538 .B265 1993Publication Date: 1993
The Arabic Novel: an historical and critical introduction by
This edition includes new material on the Arabic novel up to 1993. It is a survey of the Arabic novel and its development from its beginnings in the 19th century until today. It traces the origin, early cultivation and the mature period after World War II of the Arabic novel.
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ7577 .A4 1995Publication Date: 1994
Arabic Literature - Anthologies
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Tablet and Pen by Location: Mugar Stacks PJ409 .T33 2011Publication Date: 2010The countries that stretch along the broad horizons of the Middle East--from Morocco to Iran, from Turkey to Pakistan--boast different cultures, different languages, and different religions. Keenly aware of the collected scars left by a legacy of colonial rule, the acclaimed writer Reza Aslan, with a team of four regional editors and seventy-seven translators, cogently demonstrates with Tablet and Pen how literature can, in fact, be used to form identity and serve as an extraordinary chronicle of the disrupted histories of the region.The Other Middle East : an Anthology of Modern Levantine Literature by This unique literary collection offers a window on the contemporary Levant, a region comprising most of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, parts of southern Turkey and northwestern Iraq, and the Sinai Peninsula. Originally written in Arabic, French, Aramaic, Lebanese, Egyptian, and Hebrew, and reflecting an extraordinary diversity of cultures, faiths, traditions, and languages, the selections in this book also convey a wide range of ideas and perspectives, to offer readers a nuanced understanding of the mosaic that is the contemporary Middle East. Franck Salameh, who compiled this anthology over the course of more than two decades, introduces and annotates each selection for the benefit of the uninitiated reader, offering background on the various peoples and politics of the Levant.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2017
The Literary Heritage of the Arabs: an Anthology by
The breadth of Arabic literature produced by Arab writers from pre-Islamic times to the contemporary period reveals a world of thought and feeling largely unseen and unheard in the English-speaking world. In this wide-ranging and unique anthology, works by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim authors show the genius of Arab civilization through the prism of literature.Through odes (or 'Mu'allaqat' ); selections from the Qur'an; samples of Hadith and the poetry of rivalry, love, adventure, and mystic transcendence; and prose conveying scientific innovation, philosophical inquiry, theological disputation, and historical analysis, this extraordinary collection provides an authoritative overview of Arabic literature.
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ7510 .L584 2012Publication Date: 2013
Modern Arabic Fiction: an Anthology by
Beginning with the late-nineteenth-century cultural resurgence and continuing through the present day, short stories and novels have given voice to the personal and historical experiences of modern Arabs. This anthology offers a rich and diverse selection of works from more than one hundred and forty prominent Arab writers of fiction. The collection reflects Arab writers' formal inventiveness as well as their intense exploration of various dimensions of modern Arab life, including the impact of modernity, the rise of the oil economy, political authoritarianism, corruption, religion, poverty, and the Palestinian experience in modern times. Salma Khadra Jayyusi, a renowned scholar of Arabic literature, has included short stories and excerpts from novels from authors in every Arab country. Modern Arabic Fiction contains writings stretching from the pioneering work of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors to the novels of Naguib Mahfouz and the stories of contemporary Arab writers. In addition to familiar names such as Mahfouz, the anthology presents excerpts from writers well known in the Arab world but just beginning to find an audience in the West, including early twentieth century Christian Lebanese writer Jurji Zaydan, whose historical epics were eye-openers for generations of Arab readers to the achievements of medieval Islamic civilization; Yusuf Idris's complex and brilliant portrait of Egypt's poor; 'Abd al-Rahman Muneef's searing exploration of the ecological and social impact of oil production; Palestinian writer Jabra Ibrahim Jabra's sophisticated description of the dilemma's of modern Arab intellectuals; and Jamal al-Ghitani's impressive employment of mythical time and the continuity of the past in the present. Jayyusi provides biographical information on the writers as well as a substantial and illuminating introduction to the development of modern Arabic fictional genres that considers the central thematic and aesthetic concerns of Arab short story writers and novelists.
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ7694.E8 M59 2005Publication Date: 2005
Victims of a Map: a Bilingual Anthology of Arabic Poetry by
A bilingual volume of poetry presenting the work of three award-winning Arabic poets from the past forty years
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ7694.E3 D37 2005Publication Date: 2008
Finding Articles
- BU Libraries Search This link opens in a new window
BU Libraries Search provides a single place to search for a wide variety of research material provided by the library. Resources covered by the search includes books and eBooks, journals, scores and sheet music, video and audio recordings, and other physical and electronic items held by the library. Coverage encompasses materials relating to the prehistoric and antique world through to the present.
Literature Databases
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
This database provides full text access to the back issues of core scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Book reviews are included as well as journal articles. Abstracts are available for some of the articles.
- Project Muse This link opens in a new windowProject Muse provides digital access to scholarly journals and books in the humanities and social sciences. The scholarly content comes from non-profit scholarly publishers, including university presses and societies. The full text resources include journal articles, book reviews and book chapters.
- MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window
Indexes critical materials on literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore. Includes citations from worldwide publications: periodicals, books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations and bibliographies.
- Literature Online This link opens in a new window
LION includes texts, criticism, and reference material, including thousands of literary articles, essays, biographies and encyclopedia entries on over 350,000 works of poetry, prose, and drama from the 8th to the 21st century.
- Literature Criticism Online This link opens in a new window
Contains critical and biographical essays on authors currently living or who died after Jan. 1, 2000.
Humanities/Social Science Databases
- ATLA Religion Database This link opens in a new window
An index to journal articles, essays, and book reviews in the field of religion. Covers biblical studies, world religions, church history, and religious perspectives on social issues.
- Index Islamicus This link opens in a new window
Index to literature on Islam, the Middle East and Muslim areas of Asia and Africa, and Muslim minorities elsewhere. Includes journal articless, conference proceedings, monographs, and book reviews.
- Bibliography of Asian Studies This link opens in a new window An index to works, primarily in the humanities and the social sciences, pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia. Covers articles, chapters in edited volumes, conference proceedings, anthologies, Festschriften, and books.
- Database of Arabic Literature in Western Research The Database of Arabic Literature in Western Research (DAL) is an easy-to-use, searchable, internet-based bibliographic database of Arabic literature in western research. Search Keyword and other Browse links on the left hand bar, as well as Simple Search and Advanced Search, provide easy access to detailed, annotated and content-enriched bibliographic records of books, articles, chapters of books and reviews written in English since the movement of translation and commentary of Arabic literary texts first began in the West.
Text Collections
- al-Meshkat Searchable database of classical Arabic texts
- al-Waraq A searchable database of classical Arabic texts
- Noor Library A collection of online texts in Persian and Arabic
- The Quranic Arabic Corpus The Quranic Arabic Corpus is an annotated linguistic resource which shows the Arabic grammar, syntax and morphology for each word in the Holy Quran. The corpus provides three levels of analysis: morphological annotation, a syntactic treebank and a semantic ontology.
- Internet Sacred Texts Archive - Texts of Islam A freely available, non-profit archive of electronic texts of the Qur'an, Hadith, Sufi and other texts
- MENAdoc Digital Collections he MENAdoc - Digital Collections is one of the central components of the DFG Specialised Information Service for Middle East, North African and Islamic Studies' digital services. MENAdoc provides Open Access digital documents with regard to the MENA-region and to Islamic studies.
Literary Biography
- Contemporary Authors This link opens in a new windowA bio-bibliographical guide to current writers in fiction, general nonfiction, poetry, journalism, drama, motion pictures, television, and other fields.
- Gale in Context: Biography This link opens in a new window
Biography In Context offers biographical information about historically significant figures as well as present-day newsmakers. It includes reference content alongside magazine and journal articles, primary sources, videos, audio podcasts, and images.
- Literature Online This link opens in a new window LION includes texts, criticism, and reference material, including thousands of literary articles, essays, biographies and encyclopedia entries on over 350,000 works of poetry, prose, and drama from the 8th to the 21st century.
Browse books and ebooks on:
Routledge Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature by Location: Mugar Reference X PJ7510 .R76 2010Publication Date: 2010The Encyclopedia of Arabic Literatureis an authoritative reference source on the most important authors, works, genres, key terms, concepts and issues in the Arabic literary tradition.
Crosshatching in Global Culture: a dictionary of modern Arab writers : an updated English version of R.B. Campbell's "Contemporary Arab Writers" by Location: Mugar Reference X PJ7521 .C768 2004Publication Date: 2004
Essays in Arabic Literary Biography (volumes 2 & 3) by
The three volumes of Essays in Arabic Literary Biography contain entries by leading specialists in the field of Arabic literature studies devoted to the major representatives of the literary heritage of Arabic culture within three specific periods: 950-1350 (ed. Terri DeYoung); 1350-1850 (ed. Joseph E. Lowry and Devin Stewart); and 1850-1950 (ed. Roger Allen). Each volume attempts to refl ect larger movements of cultural development and change within the realms of literary production and commentary during the given period. While the major names associated with each period are to be found, a particular effort has also been made to reflect the geographical diversity of the Arabic-speaking regions in the different historical periods involved. This volume contains biographical studies of thirty-eight Arabic literary fi gures who lived between 1350 and 1850, a neglected period of Arabic literary history. The essays situate the authors and their writings in local contexts of literary and cultural production, from Morocco to Iran, India and Indonesia, in many cases offering the fi rst comprehensive assessments of their lives and works. What emerges from the collection as a whole is a period characterized by institutional change, competition, conspicuous virtuosity, and diversity - when Christian and Shiite writers also played important roles. Although modern scholarship has seen these centuries as mired in cultural decadence and decline, the literary figures in this volume display astonishing inventiveness, both in their understanding and appropriation of the Arabic literary tradition as well as in their many formal innovations.
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ7521 .E87 2009Publication Date: 2009
Interpreting the Self: autobiography in the Arabic literary tradition by
Autobiography is a literary genre which Western scholarship has ascribed mostly to Europe and the West. Countering this assessment and presenting many little-known texts, this comprehensive work demonstrates the existence of a flourishing tradition in Arabic autobiography. Interpreting the Self discusses nearly one hundred Arabic autobiographical texts and presents thirteen selections in translation. The authors of these autobiographies represent an astonishing variety of geographical areas, occupations, and religious affiliations. This pioneering study explores the origins, historical development, and distinctive characteristics of autobiography in the Arabic tradition, drawing from texts written between the ninth and nineteenth centuries c.e. This volume consists of two parts: a general study rethinking the place of autobiography in the Arabic tradition, and the translated texts. Part one demonstrates that there are far more Arabic autobiographical texts than previously recognized by modern scholars and shows that these texts represent an established and--especially in the Middle Ages--well-known category of literary production. The thirteen translated texts in part two are drawn from the full one-thousand-year period covered by this survey and represent a variety of styles. Each text is preceded by a brief introduction guiding the reader to specific features in the text and providing general background information about the author. The volume also contains an annotated bibliography of 130 premodern Arabic autobiographical texts. In addition to presenting much little-known material, this volume revisits current understandings of autobiographical writing and helps create an important cross-cultural comparative framework for studying the genre.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2001
Arab Women Writers by Location: Mugar Reference X PJ7525.2 .D413 2008Publication Date: 2008An invaluable new reference source and critical review of Arab women writers from the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century .
In the House of Silence: autobiographical essays by Arab women writers by
To complement the novels in Garnet's award-winning Arab Women Writers series, In the House of Silence is a collection of autobiographical writings by thirteen leading Arab women authors. Through these testimonies the women describe their experiences and expose the often-difficult conditions under which their narratives were woven. Patterns emerge, which run throughout their testimonies - experiences of confinement, subjugation, the struggle for education and the eventual use ofwriting as a way out. They speak of their own reasons for writing, of how experiences in family life, politics, exile and even imprisonment have affected them and their work, and of how their motivation has been both tested and reinforced by various setbacks and the struggle for recognition. Startlingly honest, these testimonies will be essential reading for all those interested in women's roles in Arab society and the ways that these roles are changing.
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ7525.2 .I5 1998Publication Date: 1998
Bibliographies
- MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window
Indexes critical materials on literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore. Includes citations from worldwide publications: periodicals, books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations and bibliographies.
- Bibliography of Asian Studies This link opens in a new window An index to works, primarily in the humanities and the social sciences, pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia. Covers articles, chapters in edited volumes, conference proceedings, anthologies, Festschriften, and books.
- Arabic Materials in English Translation: a bibliography of works from the pre-Islamic period to 1977 byLocation: Mugar Reference X Z3014.L56 A52Publication Date: 1980
- Iraq's Modern Arabic Literature: a guide to English translations since 1950 by
Covering 60 years of materials, this bibliography cites translations, studies, and other writings, which represent Iraq's national literature, including recent works of numerous Iraqi writers living in Western exile. The volume serves as a guide to three interrelated data: o Translations that have appeared since 1950, as books or as individual items (poems, short stories, novel extracts, plays, diaries) in print-and non-print publications in Iraq and other Arab and English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. o Relevant studies and other secondary sources including selected reviews and author interviews, which cover Iraqi literature and writers. o The scope of displacement or dispersion of Iraqi writers, artists, and other intellectuals who have been uprooted and are now living in exile in Arab or other Western countries. By drawing attention to a largely overlooked but relevant and extensive literature accessible in English, this first of its kind book will serve as an invaluable guide to students of contemporary Iraq, modern Arabic literature, and other fields such as women's studies, postcolonial studies, third world literature, American-Arab/Muslim Relations, and Diaspora studies.
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ8043.5.E5 A48 2010 and OnlinePublication Date: 2010
- Modern Arabic Literature in Translation: A Companion by
This indispensible guide to modern Arabic literature in English translation features not only a comprehensive bibliography but also chapters on fiction, drama, poetry, and autobiography, as well as a special chapter on Iraq's Arabic literature. By focusing on Najib Mahfuz, one of Arabic Literature's luminaries, and on poetry--a major, if not the major genre of the region-- Altoma assesses the progress made towards a wider reception of Arabic writing throughout the western world.
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ7538 .A358 2005Publication Date: 2005
Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature (2 vols) by
The Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature is an authoritative reference source on the most important authors, works, genres, key terms, concepts and issues in the Arabic literary tradition. The Encyclopediacovers the classical (pre-Islamic to 1258), transitional (1258-1798) and modern periods within a single work. In over 1300 separately-authored entries, many of the world's experts combine current research with traditional study to provide authoritative analysis and commentary on a wide range of areas. These include major authors, important works, and a variety of literary terms. Also covered are forms such as poetry, drama and newspaper writing and key critical concepts of Arabic literature.
Location: Mugar Reference X PJ7510 .E53 1998Publication Date: 1998
Arabic Literature of Africa (2 vols) by
The second volume of Arabic Literature of Africa (of which six volumes are planned) deals with the literature of Central Sudanic Africa, i.e. the area lying between the present Republic of the Sudan and Mali.The bulk of the work concerns Nigeria, which has produced a voluminous and varied Arabic-Islamic literature. The smaller and less studied Arabic literature traditions of Chad, Cameroun and Niger are also examined.The work is arranged both chronologically and by sub-region, and writers have been grouped within chapters according to their scholarly and religious affiliations. Full details are given of known manuscripts, published editions and translations. There are indexes of titles, authors, first lines of poetry and a general index. An initial overview and chapter introductions provide an outline intellectual history.
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ7519 .A73 1994Publication Date: 1995
