A01=Jokha Alharthi
Arabic literature
Arabic poetry
Author_Jokha Alharthi
Category=DSBB
Category=DSC
classical Arab poetry
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eq_nobargain
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Ghazal
love
love poems
Middle Eastern literature
poetry
the body
Udhri
Product details
- ISBN 9781474486330
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 21 May 2021
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Jokha Alharthi re-appraises the relationship between love, poetry and Arab society in the 8th to 11th centuries. She avoids familiar clichés about the purity of love in ‘Udhri poetry – broadly speaking, an Arabic counterpart to the western medieval concept of unconsummated courtly love – and instead questions the traditional much-vaunted emphasis on chastity and the assumption that this poetry omits any concept of the body. Alharthi focuses on the key differences between what the poetry itself says and the views of later sources about ‘Udhri poets and their works. She also documents how the representation of the beloved in the ‘Udhri ghazal was influenced by pre-Islamic poetry, showing how this tradition developed with a series of overlapping historical layers. And she breaks new ground by examining how this poetry treats not only the body of the beloved but also that of her lover, the poet himself.
Jokha Alharthi is Associate Professor of Classical Arabic Literature in Sultan Qaboos University. She is the author of several short story collections and novels, including Celestial Bodies, winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2019.
