Further Details

Title: Alexandrian Cosmopolitanism
Condition: New
Subtitle: An Archive
Author: Hala Halim
Format: Hardback
ISBN-10: 0823251764
EAN: 9780823251766
ISBN: 9780823251766
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Genre: Literary Criticism
Topic: History
Release Date: 09/19/2013
Description:

Interrogating how Alexandria became enshrined as the exemplary cosmopolitan space in the Middle East, this book mounts a radical critique of Eurocentric conceptions of cosmopolitanism. The dominant account of Alexandrian cosmopolitanism elevates things European in the city’s culture and simultaneously places things Egyptian under the sign of decline. The book goes beyond this civilization/barbarism binary to trace other modes of intercultural solidarity.
Halim presents a comparative study of literary representations, addressing poetry, fiction, guidebooks, and operettas, among other genres. She reappraises three writers—C. P. Cavafy, E. M. Forster, and Lawrence Durrell—who she maintains have been cast as the canon of Alexandria. Attending to issues of genre, gender, ethnicity, and class, she refutes the view that these writers’ representations are largely congruent and uncovers a variety of positions ranging from Orientalist to anticolonial. The book then turns to Bernard de Zogheb, a virtually unpublished writer, and elicits his camp parodies of elite Levantine mores in operettas, one of which centers on Cavafy. Drawing on Arabic critical and historical texts, as well as contemporary writers’ and filmmakers’ engagement with the canonical triumvirate, Halim orchestrates an Egyptian dialogue with the
European representations.

Missing Information?

Please contact us if any details are missing and where possible we will add the information to our listing.