Overview
- Examines several interrelated fields including literary history, translation theory, urban studies, and cultural studies
- Reframes a series of major questions in translation studies and comparative literature including the “ethics” of translation in colonial and postcolonial contexts
- Taps into an overlooked and rather rich archive of early twentieth-century fiction and periodicals
Part of the book series: Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World (LCIW)
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About this book
This book is a critical study of the translation and adaptation of popular fiction into Arabic at the turn of the twentieth century. It examines the ways in which the Egyptian nahda discourse with its emphasis on identity, authenticity and renaissance suppressed various forms of cultural and literary creation emerging from the encounter with European genres as well as indigenous popular literary forms and languages. The book explores the multiple and fluid translation practices of this period as a form of ‘unauthorized’ translation that was not invested in upholding nationalist binaries of originality and imitation. Instead, translators experimented with radical and complex forms of adaptation that turned these binaries upside down. Through a series of close readings of novels published in the periodical The People’s Entertainments, the book explores the nineteenth century literary, intellectual, juridical and economic histories that are constituted through translation, and outlines a comparative method of reading that pays particular attention to the circulation of genre across national borders.
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Keywords
Table of contents (8 chapters)
Reviews
“Selim’s is an original, readable, and witty contribution to both translation studies and Nahda studies. Future researchers will have to reckon with her thoroughly researched arguments and ideas.” (Ziad Elmarsafy, Professor of Comparative Literature, King’s College London, UK)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Samah Selim is Associate Professor in the Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures at Rutgers University, USA. She is the author of The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt, 1880-1985 (2004).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Popular Fiction, Translation and the Nahda in Egypt
Authors: Samah Selim
Series Title: Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20362-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-20361-0Published: 10 July 2019
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-20364-1Published: 14 August 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-20362-7Published: 01 July 2019
Series ISSN: 2945-705X
Series E-ISSN: 2945-7068
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 232
Topics: Postcolonial/World Literature, Twentieth-Century Literature, African Literature, European Literature