Description
Book SynopsisThis book studies contemporary Arab political poetry, providing insights into how modern Arab media forms are shaped by language and culture. By examining lives and works of individual poets, singers, and audiences, it shows how tribalism is a resource for critical reform when expressed in tropes of community, place, person, and history.
Trade ReviewThis brilliant interdisciplinary work on media and tribal poetry in Yemen by a superb Arabist is at once a significant contribution to media studies, linguistic pragmatics, poetics, and the anthropology of the Middle East. The scholarship is thorough, carefully building on previous research, but also departing from it in original and imaginative ways… While acknowledging that the two aesthetics of circulation and resonance are integral to each other, Miller argues that it is particularly the aesthetics of ‘resonance’ that is important to understanding how moral authority, political order (or disorder), and artistic success are debated by Yemenis. This idea, and the claims the author makes for it, will surely occasion lively discussion and debate. -- Steven C. Caton * Middle East Journal *
