INTELLECTUAL HISTORY AND TEXTUAL PRACTICES (ARABIC)

The course is part of the Master's Degree Program in Asian and African Mediterranean Languages and Civilizations, Near and Middle East and Indian Subcontinent pathway. It intends to solicit reflection on the dialogical relationship between tradition and innovation with particular attention to the field of literary production, and specifically to the concept of canon and its parodic rewritings, through examples of in prose and poetry.

The student will gain familiarity with the tools of textual analysis, as well as mastery of specialized language. He or she will acquire the ability to contextualize texts historically and generically and to grasp their connections with the broader context of intellectual history, using the tools for bibliographical research and the techniques of textual analysis; he or she should be able to carry out research and in-depth studies independently and to present the results clearly and articulately.

The student should show adequate knowledge of the history of Arabic literature and a good knowledge of standard Arabic.

The model and the antimodel: examples of parody in premodern Arabic literature.
Parody constitutes one of the tools for subverting earlier texts, but also for revealing their implications and can be an engine for developing new modes of expression. Rediscussing and rewriting canonical texts, while acknowledging their status as models, also means challenging the ideologies and values of the society that produced these texts. The course will focus on the processes of parodic rewriting in premodern Arabic literature through the analysis of specific case studies. During the course texts will be read and analyzed: texts of poetry (particularly passages of poetry from the pre-Islamic and Abbasid periods) and texts of prose (adab texts from the Abbasid and Mamluk periods). The dynamics of intellectual renewal activity and the tension between tradition and innovation in the literary space of pre-modern Arab-Islamic culture will also be investigated.

Texts in Arabic - selected passages from

al-Zawzanī, Šarḥ al-mu'allaqāt al-sab'
al-Iṣfahānī, K. al-aġānī
Abū Nuwās, Diwān
al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baġdādī, al-Taṭfīl
al-Qalqašandī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿšā
al-Ṣābī, Rusūm dār al-ḫilāfa
al-Ḥarīrī, Maqāmāt
Ibn Faḍl Allāh al-ʿUmarī, Masālik wa-l-mamālik

Studies
Daniel Sangsue, La parodia, Armando editore, 2006.
Hutcheon, Linda and Malcolm Woodland, “Parody”, in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2012, pp. 1101-1003.
Ghersetti, A., La Représentation des piques-assiette dans la littérature d’adab, « Annales Islamologiques » n. 42 (2008), pp. 213-230.
Ghersetti, A., Le coquin Imru’al-Qays ou comment la poésie engendre les anecdotes, « Synergies Monde Arabe », 5 (2008), pp. 141-149, ISSN 1766-2769
Meisami, J. S., Abū Nuwās and the rhetoric of parody, In Festschrift Ewald Wagner zum 65. Geburtstag. Hrsg. W.Heinrichs & G.Schoeler.Band II: Studien zur arabischen Dichtung, Beirut: Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft; Stuttgart: Steiner, 1994, pp. 246-257.

Recommended readings
Beaumont, Daniel, Parody and Lying in al-Bukhala', Studia Islamica, 79 (1994), pp. 27-49
Guo, Li, The devil’s advocate: Ibn Dāniyāl's art of parody in his Qaṣīdah No.71, Mamlūk Studies Review Vol. 7, (2003), pp. 177-209.

Other texts could be recommended during the course.
Arabic texts and critical literature will be made available to students in the course's Moodle space.

The exam consists of a discussion of the topics covered in the course, which the student must demonstrate knowledge of and expound on appropriately, and the preparation of a work done independently by the student, which will be presented and discussed in the classroom (Power Point presentation).

The course includes lectures and seminar activities.

Italian

The course involves reading and translating Arabic texts during face-to-face classes.

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