1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910484081803321

Autore

Selim Samah

Titolo

Popular Fiction, Translation and the Nahda in Egypt / / by Samah Selim

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2019

ISBN

3-030-20362-X

Edizione

[1st ed. 2019.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (XI, 232 p.)

Collana

Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World, , 2945-7068

Disciplina

809

892.73609962

Soggetti

Literature

Literature, Modern - 20th century

African literature

European literature

World Literature

Twentieth-Century Literature

African Literature

European Literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: Bad Books for Bad Readers -- Chapter 3: The People's Entertainments -- Chapter 4: The Things of the Time: Cairo at the Turn of the Century -- Chapter 5: New Women and Novel Characters -- Chapter 6: Fiction and Colonial Identities -- Chapter 7: Pharaoh's Revenge -- Chapter 8: The Mysteries of Cairo.

Sommario/riassunto

This book is a critical study of the translation and adaptation of popular fiction into Arabic at the turn of the twentieth century. It examines the ways in which the Egyptian nahda discourse with its emphasis on identity, authenticity and renaissance suppressed various forms of cultural and literary creation emerging from the encounter with European genres as well as indigenous popular literary forms and languages. The book explores the multiple and fluid translation practices of this period as a form of ‘unauthorized’ translation that was not invested in upholding nationalist binaries of originality and imitation. Instead, translators experimented with radical and complex



forms of adaptation that turned these binaries upside down. Through a series of close readings of novels published in the periodical The People’s Entertainments, the book explores the nineteenth century literary, intellectual, juridical and economic histories that are constituted through translation, and outlines a comparative method of reading that pays particular attention to the circulation of genre across national borders.