Through the close reading a number of fictional and non -fictional texts, this course will look at fundamental features and aspects of literature and literary culture through a number of genres in Pre-Modern Islamic literature, such as literary vs. real space and time, individual vs. communal aspects of literature, orality vs. written culture, fiction vs. history, didacticism and entertainment, narrative credibility, frame story, narrator and levels of fictionality, the “Other”, intertextuality, author-, work -, and audience-focused approaches to interpretation, translation, relationship between form and content, high vs. popular culture. Aside from trying to contextualize these fundamental works in their own place and time, we will consider them as part of world literature, paying attention to their reception in both the West and the East.
