The Poetics of the Obscene in Premodern Arabic Poetry: Ibn al-Ḥajjāj and Sukhf

234 Pages·2014·8.67 MB·English

by  Sinan Antoon (auth.)

Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World
Edited by Hamid Dabashi
Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative
Literature at Columbia University. Hamid chaired the Department of Middle East and
Asian Languages and Cultures from 2000 to 2005 and was a founding member of the
Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. His most recent books include I slamic
Liberation Theology: Resisting the Empire ; M akhmalbaf at Large: The Making of a Rebel
Filmmaker ; I ran: A People Interrupted; and an edited volume, D reams of a Nation: On
Palestinian Cinema .
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Th e Poetics of the Obscene in Premodern Arabic Poetry: Ibn al-(cid:3) ajj ā j and Sukhf
By Sinan Antoon
Other works by the author
Th e Baghdad Blues (2007)
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Translations
Mahmoud Darwish, In the Presence of Absence
The Poetics of the Obscene in
Premodern Arabic Poetry
(cid:6) Sukhf
Ibn al- ajj a¯ j and

Sinan Antoon
THE POETICS OF THE OBSCENE IN PREMODERN ARABIC POETRY
Copyright © Sinan Antoon, 2014.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-30153-6
All rights reserved.
First published in 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-45361-0 ISBN 978-1-137-39178-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137391780
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Antoon, Sinan, 1967–
The poetics of the obscene in premodern Arabic poetry : Ibn al-Hajjaj
and sukhf / by Sinan Antoon.
pages cm. —(Literatures and cultures of the Islamic world)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Ibn Hajjaj, al-Husayn ibn Ahmad, –1001—Criticism and
interpretation. 2. Scatology in literature. 3. Words, Obscene,
in literature. I. Title.
PJ7750.I196Z58 2014
892.7(cid:2)134—dc23 2013031110
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: February 2014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Iraqis, everywhere
A shard from their cultural history
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Contents
Note from the Editor ix
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
1 Ibn al-(cid:6) ajj ā j and Sukhf : Genealogies 5
2 Parodying the Tradition 45
3 Sukhf in Panegyric Poetry 65
4 Sukhf as Sukhf : Ab ū Nuw ā s, Muj ū n , and Ibn al- (cid:6) ajj ā j 93
5 Sukh ,f Scatology, and Society 125
Conclusion 135
Appendix A: Arabic Texts 137
Appendix B 177
Appendix C 183
Notes 185
Bibliography 213
Index 221
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Note from the Editor
The Islamic world is home to a vast body of literary production
in multiple languages over the last 1,400 years. To be sure, long
before the advent of Islam, multiple sites of significant liter-
ary and cultural productions existed from India to Iran to the Fertile
Crescent to North Africa. After the advent of Islam in the mid-seventh
century CE, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Turkish authors in particular
produced some of the most glorious manifestations of world literature.
From prose to poetry, modern to medieval, elitist to popular, oral to lit-
erary, this body of literature is in much need of a wide range of renewed
scholarly investigation and lucid presentation.
T he purpose of this series is to take advantage of the most recent
advances in literary studies, textual hermeneutics, critical theory, femi-
nism, postcolonialism, and comparative literature to bring the spectrum
of literatures and cultures of the Islamic world to a wider audience and
appreciation. Usually the study of these literatures and cultures is divided
between classical and modern periods. A central objective of this series is
to cross over this artificial and inapplicable bifurcation and abandon the
anxiety of periodization altogether. Much of what we understand today
from this rich body of literary and cultural production is still under the
influence of old-fashioned orientalism or post–World War II area studies
perspectives. Our hope is to bring together a body of scholarship that
connects the vast arena of literary and cultural production in the Islamic
world without the prejudices of outmoded perspectives. Toward this
end, we are committed to pathbreaking strategies of reading that collec-
tively renew our awareness of the literary cosmopolitanism and cultural
criticism in which these works of creative imagination were conceived in
the first place.
Hamid Dabashi