Review: Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition: Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition (original) (raw)

Autobiography in the Islamic World

This course addresses the rhetoric of selfhood. That is, rather than only ideas of the self, it is the linguistic forms of such ideas that will mainly preoccupy us. This emphasis on how language informs the ways in which the self was understood in the past will keep our attention focused on the wider cultures of rhetoric – courtly speech-situations, intimate circles of Sufi adepts, royal harems, trans-national print-communities, modern political parties – in which apparently abstract ideas of selfhood circulated. We will read both biographies and autobiographies to pose the following questions among others: does the act of writing play a constitutive or representative role in the telling of a life? Is the self in question conceived of as unique or as transpersonal? Is it gendered and, if so, how? What are the articulations of individual and public memory? In answering these questions aspects of narrative design, the interplay of poetry and prose, the uses of painting embedded in writing and the logics of genre will form only some of our foci of attention. The text for every week will be paired with an essay or two on it or on the general field or genre it belongs to.

Autobiography in the Islamic World - Graduate course syllabus

2018

This course addresses the rhetoric of selfhood. That is, rather than only ideas of the self, it is the linguistic forms of such ideas that will mainly preoccupy us. This emphasis on how language informs the ways in which the self was understood in the past will keep our attention focused on the wider cultures of rhetoric – courtly speech-situations, intimate circles of Sufi adepts, royal harems, trans-national print-communities, modern political parties – in which apparently abstract ideas of selfhood circulated. We will read both biographies and autobiographies to pose the following questions among others: does the act of writing play a constitutive or representative role in the telling of a life? Is the self in question conceived of as unique or as transpersonal? Is it gendered and, if so, how? What are the articulations of individual and public memory? In answering these questions aspects of narrative design, the interplay of poetry and prose, the uses of painting embedded in writing and the logics of genre will form only some of our foci of attention. The text for every week will be paired with an essay or two on it or on the general field or genre it belongs to.

Religious Autobiography: Al-Munqidh mina al-Ḍalāl as an Example

Millennium Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

This study examines the autobiographical nature of Abū Ḥamid Al-Ghazālī’s well-known autobiography, Al-Munqidh mina al-Ḍalāl, or shortly Munqidh, as known in the West. The article places Al-Ghazālī’s autobiography within the tradition of autobiographical writing in classical Arabic, particularly religious and mystical autobiographies. Special focus is given to the notion of ‘conversion’ as it is the main plot and theme of the autobiography. The study also aims to show that this autobiography is better understood in light of modern research which emphasizes that this genre, especially in medieval ages, was not only partially shaped by certain values and purposes in the moment of composition, but also was significantly crafted to achieve specific purposes and values. Keywords: autobiography, religious autobiography, Munqidh, conversion

Arabic Autobiography and Ideology: Taha Husayn’s The Days & Sayyid Qutb’s A Child From the Village

This dissertation aims to answer the question ‘how are the ideologies of Taha Husayn and Sayyid Qutb, two Egyptian writers living under British occupation in the first half of the twentieth century, revealed by the form and content of their autobiographies?’ Using two ostensibly polarised thinkers, Sorbonne-educated Taha Husayn and the Islamist intellectual Sayyid Qutb, as case studies this dissertation considers the role of autobiography, as a distinctly modern form of writing, in addressing the problem of modernity in an individual as well as a national context. The dissertation compares the ideologies expressed in the authors’ autobiographies with their other non-fiction work to establish how closely the ideology expressed in the autobiography can be said to be generally reflective of the authors’ ideologies. It then compares the two autobiographies with each other in order to highlight the differences in the political ideologies expressed therein in response to the question of where and how they as individuals, and Egypt as a nation, fit in in a world that was rapidly modernizing along western lines. In both cases, we find that the authors’ choice and treatment of themes and subject matter in their autobiographies reflect to a great degree the ideology they promulgate in their non-fiction. The autobiographies, then, are ideological documents. However, the two authors’ ideologies differ greatly from each other. We find that Taha Husayn’s ideology revolves around his association of western modernity with success. According to Husayn’s ideology, the problems of modernity in Egypt can best be resolved by the spread of enlightenment (in the western sense), by providing people with the necessary moral and intellectual resources to tackle the problems of modern life. Husayn’s autobiography is a success-story that ends in the protagonist’s acceptance into the intellectual arena of Europe. This is given as an example for the rest of the nation to emulate. Sayyid Qutb’s autobiography on the other hand suggests an ideology that is rooted in the moral universe of the Egyptian village. Qutb ideology is Manichean in the sense that he finds an inherent difference in the ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ minds which he does not believe can be reconciled. Qutb’s autobiography therefore hinges upon the attempt to portray ‘authentic Egyptianness’, which is depicted by the Egyptian countryside and the mentality of its rural inhabitants. For Qutb it is imperative that social reform occurs in a way that is not disruptive and harmful to the eastern mentality as he sees it. His autobiography is concerned with showing the harmful results of imposing imported aspects of modern western culture on the eastern mind.