Arabic Reading Group: Pre-Islamic Poetry and Matters of the Heart

How can close reading of canonical Arabic texts—from pre-Islamic poetry to the Qur’an to the Prophetic traditions—provide us with a rich and specialized vocabulary to describe matters of the heart? The heart, or galb, serves in classical Arabic literature as a medium through which revelation arrives and is, at the same time, closely associated with the cognitive faculty of the understanding. But the heart is also fickle and in a perpetual state of transformation, given as the heart is the locus at which the divine and the worldly, the invisible and the visible intersect and interact. As we move from text to text, we will focus on how mystic poets and theorists of love like Ibn Arabi employ the language of longing and various literary devices to construct a humanistic image of human perfectibility. How does classical love poetry explore human interiority? What potential for transformation can we discover in classical narrative strategies? 

Readings for the course will be drawn from the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poet Series Arabic Poems, edited by Marle Hammond (2014). Additional selections will be provided by the instructor.

$335.00

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