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Literature

How Two 19th-Century Books Paved the Way for Modernism

Making It New

The common concerns of two 1855 works, Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” and Shidyaq’s “Leg Over Leg” — in particular, language, equality, freedom, paradox and multiplicity — illustrate the international nature of how the 19th century wrestled with modernity.

How the Queens of Crime Fiction Developed a Modern Myth

Rites of Detection

Between World War I and the Great Depression, the murder mystery was perfected by four women writers, gaining stratospheric popularity. Amid unparalleled social change, fictional detectives offered to symbolically restore traditional values, in a new myth for a rational age.

How Feminist Dystopias Make Sense of a Changing Reality

How Feminist Dystopias Make Sense of a Changing Reality

Whether it paints a smaller picture or a big one, ends on a note of hope or hopelessness, fiction of ideas can help us sift through what threatens to overwhelm and remind us that even in the face of rabid reaction, sparks of autonomy will invariably ignite.

A Portrait of James Joyce’s Lessons in a Kuwait English Class

A Portrait of James Joyce’s Lessons in a Kuwait English Class

What can Euro-American modernism mean to an undergraduate student of literature in Kuwait today? My students are much more focused on claiming identity than appreciating the power of not belonging. What this desire to identify forecloses, however, is contingency, openness, transformation — the possibility that things might be differently arranged.

Russia’s Orwell Problem

Russia’s Orwell Problem

Inscribed in Cyrillic, and in quiet solidarity with Russian objectors to the war, are perhaps 2 million copies of “1984” sitting on Russian bookshelves, whispering the link between the past and the present.

Long Before Shakespeare’s Doomed Youngsters, There Were Majnun and Layla

Long Before Shakespeare’s Doomed Youngsters, There Were Majnun and Layla

While the plot of Majnun and Layla is simple enough — boy falls for girl, girl’s father marries her to someone else, boy goes insane with love — the nature and depth of passion at the heart of the story are anything but.

A ‘Ghazal’ Sensibility on Valentine’s Day

A ‘Ghazal’ Sensibility on Valentine’s Day

Departure and return, variation and repetition — these movements that “ghazal” poetry makes with immense longing have come to qualify all my loves. I leave Lebanon and return to it. My daughters push me away and summon me back. I say goodbye to friends and meet them again in different cities.