Writing in response to war and national crisis, al-Samm?n, Khal?feh, Barak?t, and others introduced into the Arabic literary canon aesthetic forms capable of carrying Levantine women's experiences. By assessing their feminism in such a way, this book aims to revive a critical emphasis on aesthetics in Arab women's writing.
Writing in response to war and national crisis, al-Samm?n, Khal?feh, Barak?t, and others introduced into the Arabic literary canon aesthetic forms capable of carrying Levantine women's experiences. By assessing their feminism in such a way, this book aims to revive a critical emphasis on aesthetics in Arab women's writing.
The most important achievements of this book is its successful balance between the encyclopedic scope required to prove the existence and the importance of a literary movement and the close readings necessary to demonstrate the movement's avant-gardism. ... Hanna's Feminism and Avant-Garde Aesthetics in the Levantine Novel represents a valuable intervention in Arab feminist studies, Arab modernist studies, and trauma studies. (Rania Said, H-Levant, networks.h-net.org, August, 2017)
Kifah Hanna is Assistant Professor in the Department of Language and Culture Studies at Trinity College, USA.
Introduction: Gender, Nation, and War: A New Critical Conjunction
1. The Vicious Cycle: Contemporary Literary Feminisms in the Mashriq
2. The Gendered Subject: Literary Existentialism in Gh?dah al-Samm?n's Beirut Tetralogy
3. Sahar Khal?feh's Resistance Literature: Towards a Palestinian Critical Realism
4. Gender Dialectics: Hud? Barak?t's Aesthetics of Androgyny
Afterword: Women Writing War, A Levantine Outlook