This book endeavors to contribute to comparative literary studies, especially the study of the modern novel, through its analysis of the process of individuation in four distinct literatures, two Western and two Arabic: Norwegian literature through the work of Knut Hamsun, Irish through the work of James Joyce, Egyptian through the work of Naguib Mahfouz, and Sudanese through the work of Tayeb Salih. The overarching aim is to link the process of individuation to the novel as a distinct literary genre and demonstrate how one can probe certain aspects of individuation through studying the novel. The investigation of the texts draws on a set of complex and discerning theories from the sociology of culture as well as identity and literary theory, represented by the thinkers Pierre Bourdieu, Stuart Hall, Anthony Giddens, René Girard, and Mikhail Bakhtin. Contextualizing each writer in their specific literary field of production enables us to identify the specificity of their literary contribution in the process of shaping personal identity.

Brückenschläge (Building Bridges) is the first detailed and systematic comparison of two modern Middle Eastern literatures, taking the novel genre as a paradigm. The study’s synoptic approach challenges, and gets past, the concept of Arabic resp. Turkish “national literatures”, outlining a model for the description and periodisation of the processes at work in modern Middle Eastern literatures in general. An extensive comparison of the contexts, literary and extra-literary, in which each literature is being produced points to the conditions which favoured a similarity of development in spite of the scarcity of exchange between both literatures.

Zakariyyā Tāmir (b. 1931) is generally considered to be one of the most innovative authors in contemporary Arabic literature. One characteristic of his short stories is how they take up and retell the historical and literary traditions in a variety of ways: in his texts Tāmir works − and plays − with subjects, literary models, conventions, lore, and popular folk fictions. It is this work with and on tradition which this study explores in narratological and intertextual analyses. The study shows how Tāmir narrates tradition and how he − through this very same narrative act − forges a new concept of tradition.

The history of Palestine is one written by others, Roman and Arab conquerors, Ottoman and British rulers, and today a Zionist shadow looms. As if finally realizing that claims to territory demand a claim to history, following the defeat of 1967 some individuals began to write down their memories, a trend that has gathered apace in subsequent decades. These authors are not historians and they do not venture into the archives; they rely solely on their memory and many of them do not even live in Palestine. They share one thing: the hope that they will one day return. This hope is however not to be understood as a concrete physical relocation but rather a hope for the return of a Palestinian state. And this marks the second key date of this work: the year 2000, when these hopes were dashed.

The Egyptian novelist, short story writer and literary critic Idwār al-Kharrāṭ (b. 1926) is one of the most influential contemporary authors in the Arab world. This first monograph devoted to his work focuses on his ideas concerning the forms and functions of literature developed around his concept of ‘New Sensitivity’, posing questions as to the possibilities which open up to literature beyond literary realism, the role of the author who now replaces the omniscient with a querying narrator, the construction of fictitious worlds beyond mimetic representation and how these relate to the genre of autobiography, the use of cultural and literary tradition for contemporary poetics, and the political relevance of a literary writing that prefers the subversion of fiction to traditional commitment. The study analyses his work within the context of 20th-century Arabic literature, compares it to developments in European literature, and thus positions this body of work within contemporary world literature.

A study of the Persian poetry of Muḥammad Iqbāl (1877-1938), today Pakistan’s national poet, this work identifies the position his poems occupied between tradition and modernity, specifying the appeal they held for his contemporaries. Drawing on structural text analysis, the aesthetics of reception, and the semiotics of Umberto Eco, the study undertakes to demonstrate that the message in Payām-i Mashriq (Message from the East) and Zabūr-i ͑Ajam (Persian Psalms) is romantic. An adaptation of national romanticism, Iqbāl’s version may be called a pan-Islamic romanticism of power and so very distinct from a nature-inspired romanticism. The traditional forms utilized for the poems are revealed to be mere tools for rendering this message plausible. Employing traditional rhetorical devices to convey a thoroughly modern content, Iqbāl succeeded in establishing a bridge for the Muslims of India to connect into the discourses of pan-Islam and self-governance, thus motivating them to join India’s independence movement.

Even after three decades of Parisian exile, the Iraqi poet and publicist ͑Abd al-Qādir al-Ganabi (Abdul Kader El Janabi) (b. 1944) still deserves greater attention in the West, both by scholars and critics as well as the broader public: not only because he is the self-appointed “heir” of Surrealism in the Arab world or due to his role as a provocative and iconoclastic agitator against Arab-Islamic culture and society, but also because he is a remarkable avant-garde poet and a charismatic initiator of literary and artistic projects. As the first approach to look at al-Ganabi’s (El Janabi) thought and work from the intertwined aspects of content, expression, and reception, this study gives a fascinating picture of this incomparable enfant terrible of modern Arabic literature.

The book outlines the development of Palestinian theatre from the first theatrical attempts before 1948, to the heavy blow, which these attempts suffered as a result of the Nakba, to regeneration of the professional theatre out of the ashes of the 1967 defeat, through to the role the theatrical troupes played in the Palestinian nation-building process. The study also provides a glimpse into the nature of the current Palestinian theatrical movement, its artistic framework, the main themes and poetic traits as well as its major sources of influence.

Die Studie gewährt neue Einsichten in die Entwicklung des zeitgenössischen Theaters im Libanon. An ausgewählten Bühnenarbeiten von Rabih Mroué (geb. 1967) und Hisham Jaber (geb. 1980) führt die Autorin eine theaterwissenschaftliche Analyse anhand aktueller Theoriebildung durch. So erreicht sie eine aufschlussreiche Definition der Politik dieses Theaters: Auch wenn es sich nach wie vor kritisch mit Kriegserinnerung und der Zerrissenheit der libanesischen Gesellschaft auseinandersetzt, ist sein politischer Gehalt eher in seiner Darstellungsweise als in den konkreten Inhalten zu finden. Mroué und Jaber, die in diesen Arbeiten den Theaterzuschauer selbst ins Zentrum stellen, fordern die Selbstreflexion und Partizipation des kritischen Individuums. Indem die Untersuchung eben diese innovative Perspektive auf den Zuschauer wählt, schlägt sie gleichsam eine Brücke zu aktuellen Trends der internationalen Theaterszene.

For Palestinians, the term nakba (catastrophe) subsumes the events within the context of the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, immediately after the foundation of the state of Israel. To this day, the nakba is referred to continuously − not only within the context of politics, but also in literature and popular and everyday culture. Using interviews with Palestinian refugees in Jordan and a wide range of written sources, this volume for the first time approaches the forms and functions of nakba memories from the perspective of memory theory, demonstrating how the various events are assigned significance through narrative structures.