1st Honeyman Conference

University of St Andrews
School of Modern Languages
Department of Arabic

At the Crossroads of Arabic Literature:
The Arabic Literary Heritage in the Context of World Literature

27–30 September 2012
Parliament Hall, South Street, St Andrews, Scotland

Call for papers (PDF, 199 KB) 

Link to online shop for registration

The objective of the conference is to investigate the history of Arabic literature in its relation to other literary traditions and to explore various aspects of cultural exchange and their impact on Arabic literature in a diachronic perspective.

Arabic literature as represented by such works as A Thousand and One Nights has traditionally been perceived as the product of an exotic culture. Like a strange fruit it can be admired and enjoyed, but remains essentially alien and might often appear to exist in an impressive, yet self-contained, isolation. In reality, it has been characterized throughout its long history by its breadth, diversity and intense periods of interaction with other literatures and cultures.

Already the earliest works of Arabic literature represented by the texts of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry of the fifth and sixth centuries provide evidence of the development of the Arabic literary language beyond the linguistic borders of specific tribal dialects. This integrationist impulse of the early Arabic literary tradition became fully apparent in the following classical period of its development. During a time period of more than one thousand years, and over a geographical area extending across three continents from the Iberian peninsula to China, classical Arabic language and literature did not just form the foundations of Islamic civilization, but through intensive interaction with other literary traditions substantially secured and reinforced its multicultural character. At the end of the eighteenth century European cultural expansion in the Near and Middle East launched a new period of dynamic cultural transfer. As a result of its radical ‘modernization’ under European dominance, Arabic literature has not only experienced fragmentation into subgroups of the national literatures of Egypt, Syria, Iraq etc., but to a certain extent has even been deprived of the Arabic language as its essential feature: several contemporary Arab authors write exclusively in languages such as French and English. Nevertheless, despite all the social and cultural upheavals of modern times, contemporary Arab thought exhibits to a considerable degree the remarkable continuity of the Arab cultural and literary tradition. Consequently, even the most recent period in the history of Arabic literature can and should be regarded as a process driven by the forces of creative exchange and fertilization, which had already been shaping its rich heritage for centuries before.

Programme outline

Keynote lecture: Ken Seigneurie (Simon Fraser University Surrey, Canada)

Roundtable discussion with Radwa Ashour, Sinan Antoon, Sabry Hafez and Elias Khoury (participation to be confirmed)

Session 1: Contemporary theoretical challenges

Session 2: From tents to palaces: Arabic literature in late antiquity and early medieval times

Session 3: Classical Arabic Literature

Session 4: From the post-classical period to the Nahda

Session 5: Modern Arabic Literature in its non-Arabic context

Detailed programme to follow.