How Do You Say Epigram in Arabic? ― Literary History at the Limits of Comparison

In the first part of the book, Talib traces the history of maqati, a highly popular genre of Arabic poetry prevalent from 1200 to 1900. He describes and explains the genre's features, its operation as a literary text, and the contexts in which it appeared. He also considers its main practitioners and surveys how the genre was treated in contemporary sources. In the second part, he connects this literary phenomenon and his analysis of it to broader issues in the study of pre-modern Arabic poetry and comparative literature more generally. Specifically, he explores the relationship between the world literary category of epigram and its potential equivalents in the Arabic tradition, including its nearest equivalent maqati. Annotation ©2017 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Adam Talib, DPhil (2014) Oxford, teaches Arabic language and literature at Durham University and is an assistant editor of the Journal of Arabic Literature. Before joining Durham, he taught at the American University in Cairo from 2012–2017.