Feminism and Avant-Garde Aesthetics in the Levantine Novel

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Kifah Hanna

   Pages 1-13

3. The Vicious Cycle: Contemporary Literary Feminisms in the Mashriq

   • Kifah Hanna

   Pages 15-37

4. The Gendered Subject: Literary Existentialism in Ghādah al-Sammān’s “Beirut Tetralogy”

   • Kifah Hanna

   Pages 39-67

5. Saḥar Khalīfeh’s Resistance Literature: Toward a Palestinian Critical Realism

   • Kifah Hanna

   Pages 69-94

6. Gender Dialectics: Hudā Barakāt’s Aesthetics of Androgyny

   • Kifah Hanna

   Pages 95-123

7. Afterword

   • Kifah Hanna

   Pages 125-133

8. Back Matter

   Pages 135-198

   PDF

Writing in response to war and national crisis, al-Samm?n, Khal?feh, Barak?t, and others introduced into the Arabic literary canon aesthetic forms capable of carrying Levantine women's experiences. By assessing their feminism in such a way, this book aims to revive a critical emphasis on aesthetics in Arab women's writing.

• feminism
• gender
• history of literature
• literature
• Middle East
• novel
• philosophy
• realism
• social science
• sociology
• twentieth century
• women

“The most important achievements of this book is its successful balance between the encyclopedic scope required to prove the existence and the importance of a literary movement and the close readings necessary to demonstrate the movement’s avant-gardism. … Hanna’s Feminism and Avant-Garde Aesthetics in the Levantine Novel represents a valuable intervention in Arab feminist studies, Arab modernist studies, and trauma studies.” (Rania Said, H-Levant, networks.h-net.org, August, 2017)

"Feminism and Avant-Garde Aesthetics in the Levantine Novel is a bold and timely intervention in the field of Arab feminist studies, and constitutes an important addition to scholarship on Levantine writers due to its focus on questions of aesthetics, attention to masculinity and sexualities, and openness to a wide range of intercultural critical frameworks, including psychoanalysis and the 'avant-garde.'" - Anna Ball, Senior Lecturer in English, Nottingham Trent University, UK

"Hanna makes important advances in the field of Middle Eastern literary studies by identifying the emergence of a new literary feminism centered on aesthetics rather than simple thematic or chronological typologies. This timely work helps to deepen our cultural understanding of an important but troubled region by raising new literary critical perspectives related to gender, politics and war." - Elisabeth Kendall, Senior Research Fellow in Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Oxford, UK, and author of Literature, Journalism and the Avant-Garde: Intersection in Egypt

Kifah Hanna is Assistant Professor in the Department of Language and Culture Studies at Trinity College, USA.

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