This book is a study of anagnorisis/recognition: an important aspect in the ways in which narratives in general are structured and thematic. Beginning with an analysis of The Maqamat and related picaresque narratives, Philip Kennedy also considers the Koran and Hadith as religious narratives; some mystical narratives, and edifying anecdotage, romance in The Arabian Nights and Sira, Aristotle's poetics in the Arabian sphere, some Ishmaili narratives of clandestine travel and emergence, as well as some thoughts on the modern novel. Providing a fascinating point of comparison between Western and Arabic literature, this book illuminates how anagnorisis functions in Western poetics and how it relates to the Arabic tradition.

According to Aristotle, a well-crafted recognition scene is one of the basic constituents of a successful narrative. It is the point when hidden facts and identities come to light-in the classic instance, a son discovers in horror that his wife is his mother and his children are his siblings. Aristotle coined the term 'anagnorisis' for the concept. In this book Philip F. Kennedy shows how 'recognition' is key to an understanding of how one reads values and meaning into, or out of, a story. He analyses texts and motifs fundamental to the Arabic literary tradition in five case studies: the Qur'an; the biography of Muhammad; Joseph in classical and medieval re-tellings; the 'deliverance from adversity' genre and picaresque narratives.

Scholars of Arabic language and literature show how renowned Egyptian fiction writer Mahfouz's work transcends its setting in the ancient alleys of Cairo and speaks to all people in all cultures. The collection of essays originated in a symposium at the U. of Massachusetts recognizing Mahfouz's receipt of the 1988 Nobel Prize for literature. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Collection of newly-commissioned essays tracing cutting-edge developments in children's literature research

This volume analyses the recognition scene in the Arabic narrative tradition. According to Aristotle, a well-crafted recognition scene is one of the basic constituents of a successful narrative. It is the point when hidden facts and identities come to light - in the classic instance, a son discovers in horror that his wife is his mother and his children are his siblings. Here, Philip F. Kennedy shows how 'recognition' is key to an understanding of how one reads values and meaning into, or out of, a story.

The story of how Arab editors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries revolutionized Islamic literature Islamic book culture dates back to late antiquity, when Muslim scholars began to write down their doctrines on parchment, papyrus, and paper and then to compose increasingly elaborate analyses of, and commentaries on, these ideas. Movable type was adopted in the Middle East only in the early nineteenth century, and it wasn't until the second half of the century that the first works of classical Islamic religious scholarship were printed there. But from that moment on, Ahmed El Shamsy reveals, the technology of print transformed Islamic scholarship and Arabic literature. In the first wide-ranging account of the effects of print and the publishing industry on Islamic scholarship, El Shamsy tells the fascinating story of how a small group of editors and intellectuals brought forgotten works of Islamic literature into print and defined what became the classical canon of Islamic thought. Through the lens of the literary culture of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Arab cities—especially Cairo, a hot spot of the nascent publishing business—he explores the contributions of these individuals, who included some of the most important thinkers of the time. Through their efforts to find and publish classical literature, El Shamsy shows, many nearly lost works were recovered, disseminated, and harnessed for agendas of linguistic, ethical, and religious reform. Bringing to light the agents and events of the Islamic print revolution, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics is an absorbing examination of the central role printing and its advocates played in the intellectual history of the modern Arab world.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays advances the study of anagnorisis («recognition»), a quintessential concept in Aristotelian poetics. This book explores narrative structure and epistemology by examining how anagnorisis works in narrative fiction, music, and film. Contributors hail from the fields of cinema; opera; religion; medieval and modern English, German, and French literatures; comparative literature; and Indian (Sanskrit) and Islamic (Arabic) literatures, both classical and modern.