14298

WiSe 20/21: Framing Narratives in the Premodern Arabic Tradition

Johannes Stephan

Additional information / Pre-requisites

profound reading knowledge of Arabic

Comments

This course offers an introduction to modern narrative theory and discusses its applicability to premodern frame narratives in Arabic often referred to as stories within stories. While the academic reflection on frame narratives dates back to the early 19th century, the phenomenon of frame narratives is at least 3000 years old. Beginning with the 18th century in Europe up to the modern literary theory of the last century, the Arabian Nights have served as the perfect model to illustrate the enchanting dynamics of narrative framing. Our aim, however, is to go beyond the Arabian Nights centered approach to narrative framing in Arabic to ponder upon its broader aesthetic and social function. Our core objective is to address different narrative frames in historical and analytical terms and as a mode of cognition. Firstly, we shall reconstruct stages of the global history of frame narratives by focusing on international milestones such as Kalila and Dimna and Bocaccio's Decamerone, and their circulation. Secondly, we shall look at narrative framing from an analytical perspective of classical narratology and evaluate different terminological systems; and finally, we shall tackle more recent approaches that discuss the importance of framing as both a cognitive and an aesthetic device reflected in textual production. The concept of narrative framing will be therefore set into relation with different concepts of intra-and transtextuality and theories of aesthetics. Expanding the concept to "framing narratives," the selection of sources, which we are going to read, ranges from classical frame narratives, such as the Seven Sages, over the anthology Relief after Hardship by al-Tanukhi and more experimental narrative texts such as the epistle of Attendant Jinn and Whirling Demons, by Ibn Shuhayd al-Andalusi to multi-layered historiographical texts such as the biography of the prophet by Ibn Ishaq in its different textual representations. close