Title American arabesque : Arabs, Islam, and the 19th-century imaginary / Jacob Rama Berman

Published New York : New York University Press, ©2012

Click on the following:
EBSCO eBooks

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xvi, 269 pages) : illustrations Series America and the long 19th century America and the long 19th century. Contents Introduction: Guest Figures -- The Barbarous Voice of Democracy -- Pentimento Geographies -- Poe's Arabesque -- American Moors and the Barbaresque -- Arab Masquerade : Mahjar Identity Politics and Trans-nationalism -- Afterword: Haunted Houses Summary American Arabesque examines representations of Arabs, Islam and the Near East in nineteenth-century American culture, arguing that these representations play a significant role in the development of American national identity over the century, revealing largely unexplored exchanges between these two cultural traditions that will alter how we understand them today. Moving from the period of America's engagement in the Barbary Wars through the Holy Land travel mania in the years of Jacksonian expansion and into the writings of romantics such as Edgar Allan Poe, the book argues that not only were Arabs and Muslims prominently featured in nineteenth-century literature, but that the differences writers established between figures such as Moors, Bedouins, Turks and Orientals provide proof of the transnational scope of domestic racial politics. Drawing on both English and Arabic language sources, Berman contends that the fluidity and instability of the term Arab as it appears in captivity narratives, travel narratives, imaginative literature, and ethnic literature simultaneously instantiate and undermine definitions of the American nation and American citizenship Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes English Print version record Subject American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism Arabs in literature. National characteristics, American, in literature. Islam in literature. Arabs -- Race identity National characteristics, American -- History -- 19th century LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General. SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural. Arabs -- Race identity American literature Arabs in literature Islam in literature National characteristics, American National characteristics, American, in literature Literatur Nationalcharakter Motiv Araber Motiv Islam Motiv USA Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Form Electronic book LC no. 2011043495 ISBN 9780814789513 081478951X 9780814723210 0814723217

  Permalink