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Essays on Literature and Language
This book contains twelve selected essays in English and two translations of individual poems by Mahmoud Darwish and ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati. The essays were written for various purposes. In addition, they were written in different places and under different circumstances. Some were delivered as lectures, and some were read at conferences, but all were published in different magazines, blogs, or journals. However, at the insistence of friends and colleagues here in the United States and in Lebanon, I was encouraged to collect them in one volume and make them all readily available. Given the diversity of the reasons that necessitated the writing of these articles, there is no primary theme or line of argument that governs the overall structure of this book. This book is simply a collection of essays on literature and language just as its title states, and each essay in an independent study or chapter in itself. The richness of this book is embedded in the greatness of the authors, poets, writers and critics that it deals with and with the genres and the time periods that it spans from Medieval to Modern Arabic Literature. The authors and poets discussed in this one collection of essays include: Abu Tammam, al-Buhturi, Ibn al-Farid,Gibran Kahlil Gibran, William Blake,T.S. Eliot, Salah Abdel-Sabour, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, ‘Aziz Al-Sayyid Jasim, Ghada al-Samman, Stephen Krashen Mahmoud Darwish, and ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati. This book is like a garden with many trees and much fruit. It is my hope that every reader finds in it a tree with enough shade and interesting fruit to savor and enjoy. |
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