Gibran Khalil Gibran as Arab World Literature - (Edinburgh Studies in Modern Arabic Literature) by Ghazouane Arslane

About the Book

Examines the work and reception of the Arab émigré writer Gibran Khalil Gibran.

Book Synopsis

This monograph studies the Arab mahjari (émigré) writer Gibran Khalil Gibran (Kahlil Gibran) by examining his oeuvre as bilingual Arabic literature beyond biographical and culturalist approaches. It situates Gibran within his worldly contexts to unveil and analyse how the particular and the universal dialectically intersect in his multifarious work, including poetry, short stories, essays, plays and letters. What emerges is a post-religious poet who is both modern and critical of modernity, a creative but anxious bilingual writer, and a critical-nationalist intellectual embedded in the nahda or Arab renaissance. In its situated close readings of Gibran's work in both languages and across genres and contexts, the book reveals what is both absent and absented in its Anglo-American reception, demonstrating that there is much more to Gibran than his famous book The Prophet. It also probes this reception alongside its Arabic counterpart, highlighting and interrogating the multiple conditions of reading that have produced different functions of Gibran.

Review Quotes

Ghazouane Arslane makes a momentous intervention in current debates about world literature via Gibran Khalil Gibran. In this fascinating study, the bilingual poet/artist emerges as a multi-faceted worldly figure who exemplifies and transcends multiple categories: Mahjar poet, Nahḍawī thinker, religious writer and more. Reading Gibran against key thinkers such as Attridge, Derrida, Heidegger and Meskini, Arslane uncovers a wealth of ideas and interpretations that will forever change our view of a writer ripe for critical re-discovery.--Ziad Elmarsafy, University of St Andrews