Title: Beirut, imagining the city : space and place in Lebanese literature /
Authors: Hayek, Ghenwa,
Year: 2015
Subjects: Arabic fiction Lebanon History and criticism.; Place (Philosophy) in literature.; Arabic literature Lebanon History and criticism.; Arabic literature History and criticism.; Arabic literature History and criticism.; Lebanese literature History and criticism.; Lebanese literature History and criticism.; National characteristics in literature.; Literatur; Arabisch; Sozialanthropologie.; Stadtsoziologie; Arabic fiction; Arabic literature; Lebanese literature.; Literature; National characteristics in literature.; Place (Philosophy) in literature.; Beirut (Lebanon) In literature.; Beirut; Lebanon; Lebanon Beirut
Abstract: Beirut is the cultural, commercial and economic hub of Lebanon. But to what extent has the city affected and shaped the formation and perceptions of Lebanese national identity? Ghenwa Hayek here explores how anxieties over the past, present and future of Beirut have been articulated through a sense of dislocation present in Lebanese writing since the 1960s. Drawing on theories of cultural studies, geography and history, the author uses an interdisciplinary framework to explore the role that spaces - from rural to urban - have played and continue to play in the defining, and re-defining, of national identity in the seventy years since the creation of the Lebanese nation state. Examining a wide range of modern and contemporary literature, Hayek charts the rise to cultural prominence of the city of Beirut as a significant player in shaping perceptions of Lebanese culture and identity - not only following the destruction of the city-centre during the country's fifteen-year civil war, as is mostly assumed in recent scholarship - but over a century.
Contents: Introduction: from Mount Lebanon to Beirut: the shifting of landscapes of Lebanese fiction -- 1 Inhospitable spaces: city and village in Tawahin Bayrut and Tuyur Aylul -- 2 A city divided: Beirut in the (1975-90) civil war -- 3 Commemorative countermemories: Beirut in 1990s Lebanese fiction -- 4 Tracing Beirut in contemporary historical novels: postmemory and the urban imaginary in Rabee Jaber and Alexandre Najjar -- 5 Beirut: Past, present, future? Memory and anxiety in contemporary Lebanese comics -- Epilogue.