Before World Literature - by Matthew L Keegan (Hardcover)

About the Book

"The Maqamat of al-Hariri is a collection of stories about an eloquent rogue who delights and deceives his audiences while he plays a preacher, a beggar, a litigant at court, and much more. Composed at the dawn of the 12th century, the Maqamat was considered the pinnacle of Arabic style and erudition for eight centuries. Its allusive and intricate rhyming prose attracted scores of commentaries, and it became a central feature of Islamic education from al-Andalus to West Africa to India. Then in the 19th century, al-Hariri's Maqamat fell rapidly out of favor, becoming a symbol of cultural decadence and literary decline. Both European Orientalists and Arab reformist thinkers in the 19th century derided the Maqamat for being decadent and derivative, while assailing the entire "post-classical" intellectual tradition. In response, the canon of Arabic poetry and prose was reshaped to favor "classical" authors who were seen as more in line with modern literary aesthetics. Before World Literature addresses two main questions: Why was the Maqamat so celebrated for centuries, and why did it fall so suddenly out of favor in the 19th century? This book argues that the emergence of literariness as a rubric of World Literature led to a wholescale reformulation of reading practices and aesthetic tastes that sidelined elaborately referential books like the Maqamat. In commentary culture, by contrast, readers reveled in the riddles, erudite vocabulary, and allusions to Islamic discourses and texts like the Quran. Before World Literature sheds light on the vibrant culture of commentary that underpinned the Maqamat's success"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

An account of Arabic literary history through the lens of the reception of the Maqāmāt of al-Ḥarīrī, a twelfth-century collection of fifty trickster stories

Before World Literature offers an account of Arabic literary history through the lens of the reception of one of the most widely read Arabic texts of the postclassical period: the Maqāmāt of al-Ḥarīrī, a twelfth-century collection of fifty trickster stories written in an elaborate and highly allusive form of prose. Innumerable Muslim scholars taught the text to new generations of students and wrote extensive commentaries on it. In the nineteenth century, however, the Maqāmāt fell rapidly out of favor, its elaborate style and its commentary tradition suddenly seen as symptoms of cultural decay.

Matthew L. Keegan shows how the emergence of world literature as a literary critical paradigm led to a wholesale reformulation of literary tastes that sidelined elaborately referential texts like the Maqāmāt. Nineteenth-century European Orientalists and Arab reformist thinkers derided the Maqāmāt for being decadent and derivative, while assailing the entire postclassical Arabic intellectual tradition. The canon of Arabic poetry and prose was reshaped accordingly, favoring classical authors whose work was perceived to be more in line with modern, European literary aesthetics.

Keegan looks to the flourishing commentary culture of the postclassical period to uncover the theories of reading and interpretation that informed engagement with Islamic texts in their own time. Tracing the social, material, and intellectual practices embedded in the commentaries on the Maqāmāt, he explores how generations of Muslims read and interpreted al-Ḥarīrī's trickster stories, for edification and entertainment. Restoring the Maqāmāt to its place as the pinnacle of Arabic style and as an essential text of Islamic education for centuries, Before World Literature offers a model of how to read texts like the Maqāmāt on their own terms.

Review Quotes

""One of the most exciting and impressive works to come out in the field of classical Arabic literature in recent decades. This groundbreaking book takes seriously hitherto ignored commentaries and manuscripts of al-Ḥarīrī's Maqāmāt, radically changing our understanding of the genre."-- "Lara Harb, Princeton University"

""This ambitious and thought-provoking book offers a bold reimagining of world literature, rejecting static, map-driven frameworks in favor of a historically grounded exploration of reading itself. Through an innovative comparative approach, it follows al-Ḥarīrī's journey across interpretive traditions to grapple with the enduring question: What is literature? This rich engagement with commentary cultures connects world literature to its readers and charts a vision for the future of literary study."-- "Michael Allan, author of In the Shadow of World Literature"

About the Author

Matthew L. Keegan is the Moinian Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College of Columbia University.