Pacifist Invasions : Arabic, Translation & the Postfrancophone Lyric (9781789622263)
Pacifist Invasions is about what happens to the francophone lyric in the translingual Franco-Arabic context. Drawing on lyric theory, comparative poetics, and linguistics, it demonstrates how Arabic literature and Islamic scripture pacifically invade French in the poetry of Habib Tengour (Algeria), Edmond Jabes (Egypt), Salah Stetie (Lebanon), Abdelwahab Meddeb (Tunisia), and Ryoko Sekiguchi (Japan). Pacifist Invasions deploys side-by-side comparisons of classical Arabic literature, Islamic scripture, and the Arabic commentary traditions in the original language against the landscapes of modern and contemporary French and francophone literature, poetry, and poetics. Detailed close readings reveal three generic modes of translating Arabic poetics into the French lyric, and the mechanisms by which poets foreignize French, as they engage in a translational and intertextual relationship with the history and world of Arabic literature. Through fine-grained analyses of poetry, translations,