Description
Book SynopsisThe novel, the literary adage has it, reflects a world abandoned by God. Yet the possibilities of novelistic form and literary exegesis exceed the secularizing tendencies of contemporary criticism. Showing how the Qurʾan invites critical reading, this account of Arabophone and Francophone Maghrebi literature develops a Qurʾanic model of narratology.
Table of ContentsNote on Translations and Transliterations | ix
Acknowledgments | xi
Preface: The Ethics of Reading | xv
Introduction. The Quʾran as (Inter)text: Embodiment, Praxis, Critique | 1
Part I: Poetics of Piety
1. Existential Poiesis in Maḥmūd al-Masʿadī’s Mawlid al-nisyān | 37
2. Carnivals of Heterodoxy in Abdelwahab Meddeb’s Talismano | 58
Part II: Ethics of Embodiment
3. Apocalyptic Aftershocks in al-Ṭāhir Waṭṭār’s Al-zilzāl | 83
4. The Polyphonic Hermeneutics of Assia Djebar’s L’amour, la fantasia | 100
Part III: Genealogies of Transmission
5. Tense Eruptions in Driss Chraïbi’s Le passé simple | 119
6. Threads of Transmission in Muḥammad Barrāda’s Luʿbat al-nisyān | 141
Epilogue: Poetics, Politics, Piety | 159
Glossary | 167
Notes | 171
Bibliography | 213
Index | 231
