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In the long literary history of the Middle East, the notion of 'the beloved' has been a central trope in both the poetry and prose of the region. This book explores the concept of the beloved in a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary manner, revealing how shared ideas on the subject supersede geographical and temporal boundaries, and ideas of nationhood. The book considers the beloved in its classical, modern and postmodern manifestations, taking into account the different sexual orientations and forms of desire expressed. From the pre-Islamic 'Udhri (romantic unrequited love), to the erotic same-sex love in thirteenth century poetry and prose, the divine Sufi reflections on the topic, and post-revolutionary love encounters in Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, The Beloved in Middle Eastern Literatures connects the affective and cultural with the political and the obscene. In focusing on the diverse manifestations of love and tropes of the lover/beloved binary, this book is unique in foregrounding what is often regarded as a 'taboo subject' in the region.The multi-faceted outlook reveals the variety of philological, philosophical, poetic and literary forms that treat this significant motif.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Dangerous Love
Sarah Bin Tyeer (University of London/SOAS)
Writing to the End of Love: Wah?d and the Motif Extremes of Ibn al-R?m?.....................................
Asaad al-Saleh (Indiana University)
Sexual Displacement in Season of Migration to the North..........................................
Benjamin Koerber (Rutgers University)
The Seduction of Fayr?z Ba?r?: The Affective Dimensions of Cultural Politics in Gam?l al-Gh???n?'s ?ik?y?t al-Khab?'a (2002)..........................
Divine Love
Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab (Leiden University)
Satan as the Lover of God in Islamic Mystical Writings...................................
Miral Mahgoub (Arizona State University)
Reverence for the Beloved as a Religious Metaphor: A Study of Raj?'a '?lim's ?ubb? (The Beloved)..................................
Gender and Love
Dylan Oehler-Stricklin (Washington University in St. Louis)
Individualism and the Beloved in the Poetry of Fur?gh Farrukhz?d..................................
Richard Serrano (Rutgers University)
"Making Love through Scholarship in Jam?l Buthayna"...................................
Domenico Ingenito (University of California Los Angeles)
Jah?n Malik Kh?t?n: Gender, Canon and Persona in the Poems of a Premodern Persian Princess...................................
Erotic Love
Pernilla Myrne (University of Gothenburg)
Pleasing the Beloved: Sex and True Love in a Medieval Arabic Erotic Compendium..................................
Paul Sprachman (Rutgers University)
Love and Lust in the Early Islamic Republic: Amir Hassan Cheheltan's Revolution Street...................................................................................................................................................
Christine Kalleney (Franklin and Marshal College)
Tempting the Theologian: The "Cure" of Wine's Seduction.............................................................................................
Dialectical Love
Mehmet Karabela (Queen's University)
Lovers in the Age of the Beloveds: Classical Ottoman Divan Literature and the Dialectical Tradition..................................
Ahmad Obiedat (Wake Forest University)
The Semantic Field of Love in Classical Arabic: Understanding the Subconscious Meaning Preserved in the "?ubb" Synonyms and Antonyms through Their Etymologies..................................
