Ḥikāyat Abī Al-Qāsim: A Literary Banquet

ISBN-13: 9781474402316 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 216 str.

Emily Selove

Opis

"?ik?yat Abu al-Q?sim, probably written in the 11th century by the otherwise unknown al-Azd?, tells the story of a gate-crasher from Baghdad named Ab? al-Q?sim, who shows up uninvited at a party in Isfahan. Dressed as a holy man and reciting religious poetry, he soon relaxes his demeanour, and, growing intoxicated on wine, insults the other dinner guests and their Iranian hometown. Widely hailed as a narrative unique in the history of Arabic literature, ?ik?yah also reflects a much larger tradition of banquet texts. Painting a picture of a party-crasher who is at once a holy man and a rogue, he is a figure familiar to those who have studied the ancient cynic tradition or other portrayals of wise fools, tricksters and saints in literatures from the Mediterranean and beyond. This study therefore compares ?ik?yah, a mysterious text surviving in a single manuscript, to other comical banquet texts and party-crashing characters, both from contemporary Arabic literature and from Ancient Greece and Rome."

Spis treści

Acknowledgements; Part 1: Introduction; a. Manuscript; b. Authorship and Dating; c. Editions; d. Translations; e. Summary of Events; f. Scholarship; g. A Mediterranean Table; Part II: Chapter 1: A Sampling of the Ḥikāyah; Part III: Chapter 2: A Microcosm Introduced; a. Mimesis or Mannerism?; b. Baghdad the Party-Crasher; c. Those Camels have Passed; Part IV: Chapter 3: Crashing the Text; Part V: Chapter 4: Mujun is a Crazy Game; Part VI: Chapter 5: The Cosmic Crasher; a. Abū al-Qāsim as Microcosm; b. Abī al-Qāsim as Iblīs; c. The Microcosm is a Man; Part VII: Conclusion; a. Bojangles Won’t Dance; b. Philemon and Baucis; Bibliography; Index.