Rediscovering Ancient Egyptian Literature Through Arabic Poetics

A groundbreaking study of the relationship between ancient Egyptian literary devices and their Arabic counterparts

This book is the first of its kind to thoroughly and systematically compare ancient Egyptian and Arabic literary devices. Hany Rashwan compares the stylistic Arabic literary device of jinās, or word play, a key literary device pervading medieval and modern Arabic poetry, literary prose, songs, and proverbs, with its counterpart in ancient Egyptian. Through the deployment of Arabic literary and critical methods he therefore makes possible the rediscovery of ancient literary register and tone in a way that has eluded Western scholarship. Since Arabic, along with other Semitic languages, such as Hebrew and Akkadian, belongs, like ancient Egyptian, to the Afro-Asiatic linguistic phylum, this vital study also proposes an Arabic-based textual analytic method as a viable comparative critical method for working across these kindred languages.

Rediscovering Ancient Egyptian Literature through Arabic Poetics offers a groundbreaking postcolonial perspective on Egyptological method and theory by challenging the use of Eurocentric literary theories, terms, and concepts, and refreshing the study of ancient Egyptian and Arabic poetics. This innovative approach also speaks to, and challenges, a broader audience, including scholars of comparative poetics, comparative literature, world literature, Arabic poetics, and constructive rhetoric.

Hany Rashwan is assistant professor of Arabic Language and Literature at United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. He was a research fellow of Arabic literary theory at the University of Birmingham, where he led the Arabic poetics strand of the Global Literary Theory project funded by the European Research Council. He previously held an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the American University of Beirut. The recipient of an International Society for the History of Rhetoric (ISHR) Research Fellowship, Rashwan earned his PhD in Cultural, Literary, and Postcolonial Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.