Jan 25 Public Lecture: Maurice Pomerantz (Institute for Advanced Study)

Date: 

Monday, January 25, 2016, 4:00pm to 5:30pm

Location: 

6 Divinity Ave., #201

Maurice Pomerantz,

Assistant Prof. of Literature, New York University, Abu Dhabi
Member 2015-16, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

presents a lecture:

"The Maqāmāt Between Philology and World Literature"

Monday January 25, 4:00pm ~~ 6 Divinity Ave., #201

Maqāmāt relate the exploits of roving trickster protagonists who use ornate linguistic devices to defraud unsuspecting victims. Like their rogue anti-heroes who are always on the move, Maqāmāt also manifest an amazing capacity to travel and transform. Over the course of a millennium, versions of Maqāmat tales spread to nearly all regions of the Muslim world from West Africa to East India.

Tracing the long life of a literary form now known only to specialists, this lecture argues for the necessity of combining two radically different ways of studying texts and their historical circulation: the close reading of Philology and the distant reading of World Literature. The lecture presents a new model for the study of a pre-modern literary form that explores the textual past and engages with contemporary literary scholarship.