Lecture | Leiden Lectures on Arabic Language & Culture
Translating Jurjani: Why read an eleventh-century text about Arabic poetics?
- Date
- Tuesday 6 February 2024
- Time
- Explanation
- The lecture will be from 17.00 to 18.00. Afterwards drinks are served
- Series
- Leiden Lectures on Arabic Language and Culture
- Location
- National Museum of Antiquities
Rapenburg 28
2311 EW Leiden - Room
- Temple Hall
Translating Jurjani: Why read an eleventh-century text about Arabic poetics?
Dr. Harb has been working on a translation of a work from Arabic into English entitled The Secrets of Eloquence authored by the eleventh-century literary theorist and grammarian ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī. The Secrets constitutes a pivotal work in the development of classical Arabic literary criticism. In addition, its theories and framework have a wider applicability that Dr. Harb contends can and should be part of larger conversations about poetics and aesthetics beyond Arabic. Dr. Harb will discuss the importance of this work and of making it accessible to an English-speaking audience and will attempt to answer the question: why read Jurjani?
About Dr. Lara Harb
Lara Harb is Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and specializes in Classical Arabic Literature and literary theory. She earned a PhD in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies from New York University (2013) and a BA in Comparative Literature from Brown University (2004). Prior to joining the faculty at Princeton in 2015, Lara was assistant professor at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Arabic Poetics: Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Lara is currently working on a book-length project on mimesis in classical Arabic literature and a translation of al-Jurjani’s Asrar al-balagha (The Secrets of Eloquence). In the academic year 2023/24, she is a EUME-CNMS Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and hosted by the Philipps-Universität Marburg and the Forum Transregionale Studien.
More Activities
Dr. Lara Harb will also give a research talk on her upcoming article "Mimesis and Mythos in Aristotelian Arabic Poetics" and her current book project. This will be on Wednesday February 7th from 10-12 in Vrieshof 3 1.04, the Verbarium. If you want to attend please register via an email to : a.p.c.hooft@hum.leidenuniv.nl