Nineteenth-Century US Literature in Middle Eastern Languages
Abstract
Reading the early American canon through its Middle Eastern translations, Nineteenth-Century US Literature in Middle Eastern Languages examines prominent renditions of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Walt Whitman into Hebrew, Persian and Arabic. Tracing the revisionary processes which give rise to these Middle Eastern versions, the book argues that such translations offer unique and pivotal interpretations of their US sources, refiguring the American Renaissance through alterities of language, nationality and religion. The book suggests, in particular, that the importation of the US canon into arenas of Middle Eastern language serves to uncover implications latent within these American classics themselves, disclosing their compound cultural genealogies, while also promoting their complex participation within global cycles of textual transmission. Recovering Hebrew, Arabic and Persian renditions produced by seminal Middle Eastern artists and academics, the book also exposes illuminating readings of US literature previously neglected, accounting for the interpretations of prominent translators, novelists and scholars, such as Joseph Massel, Sīmīn Dāneshvar and Iḥsān ‘Abbās.
... However, it is crucial to understand that the critical interpretations of such comparative re-readings and interpretations in Arabic renditions recognize "no consideration of Muslim readings of the American"s fiction" (Abou Adel et al., 2024;Einboden, 2010;Al-Badawi, 2022). In another article, Einboden (2013) also argues that the network of eastward translations both epitomizes the problem of transporting US texts into the pantheon of Middle Eastern languages and serves as a significant tool for re-reading US authors themselves. In fact, we think that the lack of convergence between American and Arab media culture and the shifting cultural exploration prompt this rarefied of study to show how oriental contours in Melville"s adapted novel map out a rendition eastward while employing new havens in the Arab world. ...
This paper considers readers' different backgrounds and perspectives due to the fact that interpretations of literary texts are not static but can change over time and across cultures. The study suggests that political symbolism in Moby-Dick may be interpreted differently by Arab and Middle Eastern readers compared to Western readers. Hence, the article aims to uncover alternative perspectives that have contributed to painting the unobjective image of America in Arab perceptions. Regarding the methodology, this paper applies Wolfgang Iser"s reception theory which gives the reader the full right not only to discover meanings but also to produce them in the text as well. Accordingly, the specificity of the Arab child recipient of an American classic requires a different approach that seeks to uncover the connotations of Melville"s Moby-Dick that certainly has room in the Arab mentality today because the accessibility of Moby-Dick through cartoon adaptations has facilitated its reach to millions of children globally, including those in Arab nations. These adaptations offer Arab audience access to the ethical themes, which are often integrated into televised versions as essential educational content. This paper also explores the television adaptations and cultural localization of Moby-Dick`s cartoons by identifying the unique characteristics of Arab culture embedded within dubbed motion pictures because translating Melville"s work into Arabic involves subtle cultural adjustments that resonate with the values and sensibilities of Arab and predominantly Muslim societies.
This essay argues that scholarship being done under the sign of transatlantic studies, and Victorian transatlantic studies in particular, is problematically focused on the anglophone northern Atlantic region. Challenging both the essentialness and the disciplinary primacy of the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States, I argue instead that the entire nineteenth-century Atlantic world was a geographically and linguistically permeable space. Paying attention to crossings from north to south and vice versa is both methodologically and ethically necessary. From a methodological perspective, it can help us produce much more thorough answers to the questions transatlantic studies purports to ask about identity and community. But reading beyond anglophone British and U.S. American texts can also help us decolonize our reading and thinking. Of course, work like this requires scholars to read in second and third languages; as such, this essay discusses and denaturalizes the institutional barriers to multilingual English studies. It also offers a case study—a brief reading of a novel by Argentine writer Vicente Fidel López—demonstrating the insights that can be gained by expanding both our geographic perspective and our methodological toolbox.
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