The political thought of Václav Havel : philosophical influences and contemporary applications /
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The book considers Václav Havel's body of writing as a cohesive whole offering a consistent political philosophy. This bold claim is backed up through a close examination of Havel's plays, letters, essays and aphorisms. The political philosophy that a close reading of Havel reveals is a liberal one. However, Havel is not the run-of the-mill liberal having influences from the field of phenomenology, Masaryk, Husserl, Levinas Patočka and Heidegger which give him a nuanced view of the self. Havel sees the self as something always being formed. Hence for Havel man has an ability to 'shake' his current state and invite transcendence into his life. This agonistic process reveals our responsibility and liberates the self from forces which coerce behaviour.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004332195 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Labyrinths, intellectuals and the revolution : the Arabic-language Moroccan novel, 1957-72 /
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Labyrinths, Intellectuals and the Revolution traces the development of the postcolonial Arabic-language Moroccan novel from its roots in travel narratives and autobiography into its more mature period of stylistic and thematic diversity in the early 1970s. This study first undertakes an exploration of the political, social and artistic conditions under which the genre developed, then moves to close readings of each of the formative texts, grouped by theme. The analysis of these texts centers around their spatial practices: there is a tension between the labyrinthine space of the street, which deflects legibility, and the sacred interior within the blank walls, wherein a certain equality of gaze and power can be perceived.
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1 online resource (v, 246 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004247697 :
1877-9808 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Postcolonial Arabic Novel : Debating Ambivalence /
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This is the first study of its kind to tackle the postcolonial in Arabic fiction. In ten chapters, a lengthy preface and an extensive bibliography, the author discusses and questions a large number of novels that demonstrate cultural diversity and richness in the Arab World. Using current methodologies and discourse analysis, the author highlights engagements with postcolonial issues that relate to identity formation, the modern nation-state, individualism, nationalism, gender and class demarcations, and micro-politics. With this intention, the book locates Arabic narrative in the mainstream of world literature, and establishes the modern Arabic novel in the contemporary literary critical world of postcolonial studies. The author's lucid style and thorough knowledge of the field should recommend the book to students and scholars alike, as it comes in time to meet the needs of the academy for solid writing on Islam and the Arabs.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047401544
9789004125865
Tradition, Modernity, and Postmodernity in Arabic Literature : Essays in Honor of Professor Issa J. Boullata /
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The collection of essays contained in this volume is written by a group of prominent scholars of Arabic literature. They explore various manifestations of traditional as well as modern and postmodern themes and techniques in Arabic literature. This is the first time the tripartite concepts of tradition, modernity, and postmodernity in Arabic literary works are explored and analyzed in one volume. It illustrates very clearly the fact that Arabic literature has kept abreast not only of the primarily modern literary movements in the West - that is amply illustrated by many studies to date - but also of the "postmodern condition". Scholars in the fields of Arabic literature, Islamic Studies, Comparative Literature, postmodern studies, among others, will find this collection of essays of great interest.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047400479
9789004117631
Le corps dans le roman des écrivaines syriennes contemporaines : dire, écrire, inscrire la différence /
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Le Corps dans le roman des écrivaines syriennes contemporaines , de Martina Censi, explore les représentations du corps dans un corpus de romans en arabe publiés (entre 2004 et 2011) par six écrivaines syriennes. L'auteure conjugue l'analyse du texte littéraire avec la critique féministe et les études de genre. Par cette approche interdisciplinaire, Censi démontre que l'attention reservée par ces écrivaines aux représentations du corps féminin et masculin témoigne de leurs engagements dans la lutte pour l'émancipation des femmes, mais aussi, et surtout, dans celle pour l'affirmation de l'individu dans la société syrienne contemporaine. Les corps des personnages, marqués par leur différence unique, sont le lieu symbolique de la négociation entre les instances individuelles et collectives. In Le Corps dans le roman des écrivaines syriennes contemporaines , Martina Censi explores the representation of the body in a selection of Arabic novels published (between 2004 and 2011) by six Syrian women authors. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, which combines analysis of the literary texts with Feminist Criticism and Gender Studies, Censi demonstrates that, by focusing on the representation of female and male bodies, these novelists deal not only with feminist issues related to women's emancipation. The author reveals that they also engage in a broader analysis concerning the status of the individual in contemporary Syrian society. Marked by their unique difference, the characters' bodies become the symbolic location for the negotiation between individual and collective claims.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004315259 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Male domination, female revolt : race, class, and gender in Kuwaiti women's fiction /
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This book investigates various forms of women's resistance to male domination, as represented in Kuwaiti women's fiction. Drawing on Marxist-feminist literary theory, it closely analyses selected texts (published between 1953 and 2000), which reflect the effects of patriarchal culture and tradition on race, class, and gender relations in Kuwait and the Arabian Gulf region in general. It argues that the selected texts portray the pre-oil generations of Kuwaiti/Arabian Gulf women-born before or in the first half of the twentieth century-as resistant and/or revolutionary figures, contrary to the common notion of their stereotypical passivity and submissiveness. This book demonstrates how Kuwaiti women writers have used literature to work for, and contribute to, social change.
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Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Edinburgh, 2005. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047442677 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Media, modernity, and dynamic plants in early 20th century German culture /
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In Media, Modernity and Dynamic Plants , Janet Janzen traces the motif of the "dynamic plant" through film and literature in early 20th century German culture. Often discussed solely as symbols or metaphors of the human experience, plants become here the primary focus and their role in literature and film is extended beyond their symbolic function. Plants have been (and still are) seen as closer to static objects than to living, moving beings. Making use of examples from film and literature, Janet Janzen demonstrates a shift in the perception of plants-as-objects to plants-as-living-beings that can be attributed to new technology and also to the return of Romantic and Vitalistic discourses on nature.
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1 online resource (208 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 189-203) and index. :
9789004327177 :
2213-0659 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Storytelling in Chefchaouen Northern Morocco : an annotated study of oral performance with transliterations and translations /
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Storytelling in Chefchaouen Northern Morocco includes two sets of tales told by two different storytellers with an annotated study of the oral performance, transliterations and translations. The purpose is to preserve a part of the region's oral tradition of storytelling in the vernacular language in which it has been transmitted, presenting the original texts with parallel English translation. In addition, the cultural, literary, and linguistic background necessary for understanding this body of oral performance is given. A combination of disciplines (anthropology, philology, sociolinguistics, dialectology, comparative literature, ethnography, typology) is applied to the linguistic and literary features of the present corpus.
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Consists of thirteen folktales and two poems narrated by a man, and nine folktales, four lullabies, and one song told by a woman. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004279131 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Metapoesis in the Arabic tradition : from modernists to muḥdathūn /
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In Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition Huda J. Fakhreddine expands the study of metapoesis to include the Abbasid age in Arabic literature. Through this lens that is often used to study modernist poetry of the 20th and the 21st century, this book detects and examines a meta-poetic tendency and a self-reflexive attitude in the poetry of the first century of Abbasid poets. What and why is poetry? are questions the Abbasid poets asked themselves with the same persistence and urgency their modern successor did. This approach to the poetry of the Abbasid age serves to refresh our sense of what is "modernist" or "poetically new" and detach it from chronology.
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Originally presented as the author's dissertation (doctoral)--Indiana University, 2011. :
1 online resource (222 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-210) and index. :
9789004294578 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Thousand and one nights and twentieth-century fiction : intertextual readings /
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It is gradually being acknowledged that the Arabic story-collection Thousand and One Nights has had a major influence on European and world literature. This study analyses the influence of Thousand and One Nights , as an intertextual model, on 20th-century prose from all over the world. Works of approximately forty authors are examined: those who were crucial to the development of the main currents in 20th-century fiction, such as modernism, magical realism and post-modernism. The book contains six thematic sections divided into chapters discussing two or three authors/works, each from a narratological perspective and supplemented by references to the cultural and literary context. It is shown how Thousand and One Nights became deeply rooted in modern world literature especially in phases of renewal and experiment.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004362697 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Portrayals of Antigone in Portugal : 20th and 21st century rewritings of the Antigone myth /
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Portrayals of Antigone in Portugal gathers a collection of essays on the Portuguese drama rewritings of this Theban myth produced in the 20th and 21st centuries. For each of the cases analysed, the Portuguese historical, political and cultural context is described. This perspective is expanded through a dialogue with coeval European events. As concerns Portugal, this results principally in political and feminist approaches to the texts. Since the importation of the Sophoclean model is often indirect, the volume includes comparisons with intermediate sources, namely French (Cocteau, Anouilh) and Spanish (María Zambrano), which were extremely influential on the many and diversified versions written in Portugal during this period.
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1 online resource (xii, 361 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004340060 :
2212-9405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.