Lara Harb (Princeton): Mimesis and Adab

This talk will consider the place of mimesis in classical Arabic anecdotal literature. Professor Harb argues that the kinds of stories that were described as “adab” (edifying literature) in classical Arabic sources had an analogical relationship with reality rather than a strictly representational one.

Based on statements made by adab authors about their strategies of storytelling, this talk will explore the consequences of such an analogical view of narrative on the way stories were written and read. Harb will touch on questions of fictionality, the length and structure of stories, and the representation of characters within them with a hope to provide new tools to approach classical Arabic anecdotal literature—ones that expose the artistry of comparison rather than representation.

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Lara Harb is Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Author of Arabic Poetics: Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Harb specializes in Classical Arabic Literature and literary theory. Her current book project is on the concept of mimesis in Classical Arabic Literature, for which she has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant and a Humboldt Fellowship. Harb is the section editor of Classical Arabic Literature and Language for the Encyclopedia of Islam, 3rd edition (Brill). She is on the editorial board of the Library of Arabic Literature (NYU Press) and a forthcoming series called Sources in Early Poetics: Literary Criticism from Antiquity to the Enlightenment (Brill).

This event is sponsored by Comparative Literature and the Central Asia Initiative