Winner, 2020 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies, Modern Language Association
The novel, the literary adage has it, reflects a world abandoned by God. Yet the possibilities of novelistic form and literary exegesis exceed the secularizing tendencies of contemporary literary criticism. Showing how the Qur示an itself invites and enacts critical reading, Hoda El Shakry鈥檚 Qur示anic model of narratology enriches our understanding of literary sensibilities and practices in the Maghreb across Arabophone and Francophone traditions.
The Literary Qur示an mobilizes the Qur示an鈥檚 formal, narrative, and rhetorical qualities, alongside embodied and hermeneutical forms of Qur示anic pedagogy, to theorize modern Maghrebi literature. Challenging the canonization of secular modes of reading that occlude religious epistemes, practices, and intertexts, it attends to literature as a site where the process of entextualization obscures ethical imperatives. Engaging with the Arab-Islamic tradition of adab鈥攁 concept demarcating the genre of belles lettres, as well as social and moral comportment鈥擡l Shakry demonstrates how the critical pursuit of knowledge is inseparable from the spiritual cultivation of the self.
Foregrounding form and praxis alike, The Literary Qur示an stages a series of pairings that invite paratactic readings across texts, languages, and literary canons. The book places twentieth-century novels by canonical Francophone writers (Abdelwahab Meddeb, Assia Djebar, Driss Chra茂bi) into conversation with lesser-known Arabophone ones (Ma岣奴d al-Mas士ad墨, al-峁乭ir Wa峁弓膩r, Mu岣mmad Barr膩da). Theorizing the Qur示an as a literary object, process, and model, this interdisciplinary study blends literary and theological methodologies, conceptual vocabularies, and reading practices.
