The field of classical Arabic literature emerged from the 19th century orientalist penchant for philology to the exclusion of using insights from the humanities of its time. In large measure, the field of classical literature still remains tragically detached from the theoretical and comparative insights of the humanities today.
The aim of this panel is to interpret classical Arabic poetry using tools from the humanities in the hopes that our products will serve a humanistic market of ideas. In particular, the methods selected derive from the field of performance theory in order to emphasize the ways that pre-modern poets exerted symbolic pressure on the organs of state and society, and often in perpetuity. Our methods thus orient us to pragmatic performance issues such as virtuosity in composition, re-composition in performance, audience reaction to and interaction with the artist, and the multi-generational issues of how heritage gets selected, performed and adjusted in perpetuity.
In chronological order of topic, the first paper focuses on a little known pre-Islamic poetess, Hujayja (6th cent.), who commanded the Banu Shayban troops against the Sasanians. This paper brings much needed to attention to a female role type embraced by early Islam. The second and third papers examine the work and legacy of al-Khansa’ (7th cent.), the legendary Jahili convert poetesses. One paper measures and analyzes the virtuosity of al-Khansa’s blood lament, not by importing the artistic standards of our time, but gauging audience reaction to and interaction with her. The other paper shifts focus to how al-Khansa’ straddles the cultural divide evidenced by her success as a pagan poet championing blood and tribe and then converting to Islam in order to champion a new kind of blood and tribe, the umma, by unexpectedly re-deploying pagan vocabulary. The fourth paper deals with the Abbasid poet al-Mutanabbi (d. 965) and explores the paradox of how one poet speaks the unspeakable of torture and captivity, thus transmuting his physical crisis into a metaphorical triumph, almost in Christ-like manner. The fifth paper focuses on the most celebrated poetess of the Andalusian era, Wallada (11th cent.), daughter of the Caliph al-Mustakfi. This last paper is firmly comparative since it alternates between Wallada’s Arabic legacy in classical sources and her reception in Spanish novels.
In using performance theory our goal is not to be trendy, but to communicate with colleagues across the humanities to apply and discover new insights.
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Kaley Keener
Hujayja was a sixth century warrior poetess from the tribe of the Banu Shayban. Modern scholars have often assumed that women’s poetry from the Jahiliya was confined to the realm of marthiyya (blood lament), thus rendering an image of women from this time as powerless, passive victims. In contrast, Hujayja defies the orientalist conception of Arab female powerlessness. In her poetry, she takes an active leadership role between her tribe and the Sasanian empire: she rallies her troops to protect a female refugee, she leads her men into battle, negotiates with ambassadors, persuades Sasanian defectors, reenergizes the beleaguered soldiers, and secures victory for her tribe. This paper will examine Hujayja’s poetry, which forms a mini-saga of conflict and negotiation between the Banu Shayban and the Sasanians. I will focus specifically on the rhetorical device of punning in Hujayja’s oral performance and I will show how she manipulates this tool to create an additional dimension to her speech, which she uses to persuade or dissuade audiences. I will use the performance theories of Richard Bauman and John Miles Foley to show how performers, such as Hujayja, use punning to appeal to their audiences and elicit desired reactions. By using these interactive approaches to performance, we, as seen through the case study of Hujayja, supplement traditional humanistic scholarship with a deeper appreciation of the agency that Arab women poets exhibited in their works. Through the study of rhetorical devices, such as punning, we are able to recognize the artistic virtuosity they brought to their work and illuminate the role of Arab women as poetesses in Jahili society. Thus the study of Hujayja and her skillful performance informs and challenges the common discourse surrounding these women to include action, agency, and power, which compels us to re-evaluate our assumptions about the division between masculine and feminine forms of poetic expression in the Jahiliya.
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Prof. Cory Jorgensen
There is one genre of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry that is dominated almost exclusively by women: marthiyya (blood lament). Brief and simple in form the marthiyya is typically divided into two parts: a lament for a fallen hero followed by a list of his virtues. This genre of poetry has traditionally been given a second place standing to forms such as the qasida. One scholar, Suzanne Stetkevych, has stepped forward to study and explain marthiyya. Stetkevych argues in The Mute Immortals Speak that marthiyya was not intended to be a complicated or lengthy piece of poetry but rather to fulfill a ritual obligation. This genre, therefore, should be studied within its own context and on its own terms. This paper, which I intend to publish later in the form of an article, will examine three marthiyyas of the female poet, al-Khansa, one of the most renowned composers of marthiyya in the seventh century, written for her brothers, Sakhr and Mu‘awiya. Taking Stetkevych’s assumptions regarding ritual obligation as a starting point I will use performance theory to analyze these three marthiyyas to demonstrate al-Khansa’s artistic virtuosity and the poems’ impact on the audience. Al-Khansa aimed for more than a charming poem; as a poet she engaged her audience, who by their reaction validated and influenced her poetry. The marthiyya both performed a ritual obligation and helped shape society as poet and audience engaged in and reacted to it. By reading the marthiyya poetry of al-Khansa as a performance between poet and audience and looking at its social impacts we can better place the genre within the field of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and within the broader humanities in general. Al-Khansa’s poetry is exemplary of the entire genre of marthiyya. She showed that the marthiyya was more than a poem, more than a ritual obligation: in her hands it became a catalyst by which society was shaped and molded.
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Ms. Anita Husen
Al-Khansa' is one of the most respected Arab poetesses of Jahiliyya. Upon converting, at the time of the Prophet Muhammad, she succeeded in adapting to a new value system and gained poetic stature as a new Muslim poetess, earning even the Prophet's support for her laments. Poets who made this transition are called mukhadram and few have prospered under the two systems like al-Khansa'. Because of her success as a mukhadram poetess, her image has been appropriated as the ideal Muslima activist, to the extent that Hamas publishes a journal entitled Al-Khansa' with the goal of recruiting female suicide bombers. Yet the elegies of Al-Khansa' do not abandon the pagan, rather they fuse the pagan with the Islamic. In effect, her work and legacy complicates the very idea of conversion.
In this paper, I will explore the omission, selection, evolution, reproduction and reception of her poetry to illustrate the political motivations that led to the representation of Al-Khansa' as the ideal Muslima. Then, I will examine the rhetorical devices of repetition, use of religious epithets, and pagan references in three of her most widely circulated elegies to illustrate how they serve the function of redeeming her family, her tribe, and the pagan values of the Jahiliyya.
I will use Suzanne Stetkevych's work on women's elegies, where she argues that the function of elegy was to fulfill a social duty to incite the men folk of the tribe. Using this theory, I will illustrate how the elegies of Al-Khansa'in face-to-face performance shaped perceptions of masculinity and created a sphere of power through speech instead of violence. Speech rivaled the sword as a performance, or as a speech act. I will show that the poetry of Al-Khansa' was future conscious because the lament of her bygone brothers gives her sons the incentive to martyr themselves in the future. I will argue that this was a deliberate political move to both glorify the bygone era while at the same time earn respect as a martyr-by-proxy in the new world order by inciting her sons to die in the name of Islam. Furthermore, memorializing her kin through elegy served to memorialize the poetess herself for enduring their loss. This paper offers a new performance-based approach to mukhadram poetry, which will complicate our understanding of the transition from Jahiliyya to Islam.
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Ms. Melanie A. Clouser
This paper examines the prison poetry (habsiyyat) of young al-Mutanabbi (d. 965), one of the most celebrated poets in Arabic literature. Imprisoned for offending sensibilities, al-Mutanabbi responded with a series of poems that earned his release. Despite the outstanding reception of al-Mutanabbi by commentators and literary critics, no study has offered an interpretation of these poems. My analysis of his overlooked habsiyyat engages current theories of power relations by demonstrating how art effects change.
This paper aims to highlight the unexpected ways that medieval artists not only communicated unspeakable experiences, but also achieved great feats. The young al-Mutanabbi's time in prison resulted in poetry that reportedly prompted the governor to grant his freedom. My analysis of his habsiyyat, alongside some examples of prison poetry from other historical contexts, demonstrates how poets transform pain into verbal art in order to effect change. In al-Mutanabbi's case, the poetic skills that he honed in prison would prepare him for a lifetime of poetry that would express emotions, effect change, and come to occupy a prominent position in the Arabic literary canon.
I approach al-Mutanabbi's prison poetry by using methods from comparative works on torture (Elaine Scarry) as well as a performance theory (Richard Bauman), which give attention to composition strategies, interactions between artist and audience, and the retransmission of poetry beyond its debut context. By using performance theory and comparative studies on torture, I illustrate how unspeakable pain can be expressed through poetry and that artists advocated for themselves in the face of political authority in the Middle Ages. This analysis affords comparisons with contemporary literature, bridging the perceived gap between classical and modern literature. This project adds one medieval case study to the body of literary criticism of prison literature that focuses almost exclusively on resistance to late twentieth-century violence.
This paper exposes the relevance of al-Mutanabbi's prison poetry to contemporary experience and to current literary studies. The outcome of this study will be a published article.
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Shon Hopkin
The poetess Wallada was born in 11th century Cordoba, Spain, to Cordoba’s Caliph, al-Mustakfi and she exerted influence on the literary culture of her time. Her boldness and independence of thought in her poetry, in her social behavior, and in her training of the next generation of female poets at her literary salon provoked admiration, hostile recriminations, and even a series of poetic laments from her jilted lover, Ibn Zaydun. While Arabic primary sources place her at the center of their discourse, later European sources diminish her impact by making her peripheral to Ibn Zaydun or by denigrating her legacy and literature as it is viewed through parochial lens. This parochial approach greatly obscures the genius of this female poet.
In this study we will analyze primary Arabic scholarship on Wallada, including the work of Ibn Bassam in the 12th century, al-Maqqari in the 16th century, and al- Suyuti in the 15th century, in order to show how clearly non-western scholars understood Wallada and her cultural context. We will compare Wallada’s literature with the works of other female poets from the medieval Middle East. Finally, we will analyze modern novels from Spain and Morocco, such as those by Muhammad ‘Abd al-Rahman Yunus, Magdalena Lasalo, and Matilde Cabello, in order to show the impact which Wallada’s influence continues to have on modern audiences.
I will employ as methods New Historicism and Performance Theory to connect with other branches of the humanities in a study of comparative literature. In doing so, the study will attempt to join with other scholars of Arabic literature who are seeking to re-center Arabic literary studies within its historical and literary niche. By comparing how Wallada’s literature was received by early Arabic scholars with its later reception by Western scholars, and finally by analyzing its reception by modern novelists in Spain and the Middle East, this study will imbed Wallada firmly in her own literary niche and show that her image and literature, when understood in their context, continue to exhibit strength and vitality.
