CSI Monday Majilis

Alexander Key
The Novel in Adab: A Modern Genre in Conversation with al-Tanukhi and al-Tawhidi
Monday Majlis ONLINE AND IN PERSON (IAIS LT1) on the 3rd of June, 17:00-18:30 (UK time)

We’d like to invite you to the next online Monday Majlis of the Centre for the Study of Islam, Exeter:
Monday the 3rd of June, 17:00-18:30 (UK time), Alexander Key, The Novel in Adab: A Modern Genre in Conversation with al-Tanukhi and al-Tawhidi. Registration is required. Register please on this link:
https://universityofexeter.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEpdeyqrjwqE9bs2VxW1A5HfvsnOFHSuV6F

Abstract
The adab archive of culture and politics was an opportunity: an archive from which to pull and a space in which to play – twisting morals and testing intentions. The carnival of life is open to the present and its authenticity is represented, its genres in flux, the horizon never fixed, and there is an uncontainability that somehow still holds its form. It is a hybrid and open system that writes the future. This is how scholars of the novel write about that quintessentially modern and postmodern hybrid form. Why do their hagiographies of our dominant contemporary literary form fit some parts of the premodern Arabic-Islamic narrative archive so well? Will any form that dominates an imperial or post-imperial space attract similar hagiography – and be constituted by similar hybridity and irony?

Bio
Alexander Key is a scholar of Classical Arabic literature (Stanford University) with interests ranging across the intellectual history of the Arabic and Persian-speaking worlds from the seventh century onwards. He is currently working on an under-contract edition and translation of al-Jurjani’s Dala’il al-I‘jaz for the Library of Arabic Literature.
https://dlcl.stanford.edu/people/alexander-key

In the spirit of the label ‘Majlis’ and also to make the talks even more interesting, our speakers present the topic discussed as embedded in their own journey. You can watch the previous Majlises here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8YRkUahFj_81oJzCSDLTx4kVQQgeHLc-, but we don’t record the Q&A in order to keep the discussion free. Please come and enjoy the talks and the discussions : ) If you’d like to be included in the CSI (Centre for the Study of Islam (Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter) mailing list, please contact the CSI Manager: Sarah Wood (s.a.wood2@exeter.ac.uk).
We’ll be happy to welcome you!
István T Kristó-Nagy https://arabislamicstudies.exeter.ac.uk/staff/kristo-nagy/