When poets go to sleep: An anthropological inquiry into modernizing Arabic poetic forms.
Item
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Title
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When poets go to sleep: An anthropological inquiry into modernizing Arabic poetic forms.
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Identifier
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AAI3127869
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identifier
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3127869
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Creator
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Furani, Khaled.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Talal Asad
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Date
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2004
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Anthropology, Cultural | Language, Modern | Literature, Middle Eastern
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Abstract
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This study ethnographically examines modern transformations of Arabic poetic forms, focusing on the scene of Palestinian poetry during the last seven decades. In their quest to modernize their poetic tradition, and in conjunction with wider Arabic poetic transformations, Palestinian poets deserted the traditional lyrical poetic form for the sake of "free" verse and prose poetry shortly after the 1948 destruction of Palestine. In ethnographic interviews, poets expressed the ways their abandonment and adoption of poetic forms were moral and political actions. Analyzing the poets' words, works and literary criticism, this study argues that the modern desertion of metrical discipline is thoroughly, complexly social. Poets' narratives about the modernization of "technical devices," traditionally enabling metrical discipline, such as rhythm, rhyme and meter, point to a host of social formations intersecting with the production of sound in verse, including tradition, modernity, religion, secularism, nationalism, and globalization. Since the majority of poets interviewed in this study are Palestinian, occupation and the struggle against it figure centrally in their poetic experience.;Three chapters (song, picture and dream), are dedicated to the three forms of contemporary Arabic poetry (classical, "free" verse, and the prose poem); they form the core narration of a socio-literary and linguistic transformation. Fieldwork was conducted mainly in Israel/Palestine, but also in neighboring countries between June 2001 and May, 2002. The analysis focuses primarily on interviews with Palestinian poets living in exile in the 1967 and 1948 occupied lands, as well as Arab poets from surrounding countries. This ethnography also draws on materials collected from archives, participant-observation of poetry gatherings, daily press outlets, literary periodicals, and poetic texts.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
