Abu Shadi, Tagore, and the Problem of World Literature at the Hinge of Afroeurasia (Article)
Title: Abu Shadi, Tagore, and the Problem of World Literature at the Hinge of Afroeurasia
Author: Shaden M. Tageldin
Abstract: This essay traces the problem of world literature in key writings by the Egyptian scientist and littérateur Ahmad Zaki Abu Shadi. Abu Shadi's early nod to world literature (1908–1909) intimates the challenge of making literary particularity heard in the homogenizing harmonies of a world dominated by English. That problem persists in his account of a 1926 meeting with the Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore and in an essay of 1928 inspired by that meeting: one of the first manifestos of _al-adab al-'alami_ (world literature) in Arabic, predating the 1936 appearance of _al-adab al-muqaran_ (comparative literature). While Abu Shadi lauds Tagore's refusal to compare literatures East and West and insistence on the spiritual unity of all literatures, his struggles to articulate a world in which harmony is not an alibi for hierarchy suggest that neither comparative literature nor its would-be leveler—world literature—can shed the haunting specter of inequality.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.1163/24056480-00403004
Primary URL Description: BRILL website for article in _Journal of World Literature_ 4.3 (2019)
Secondary URL: https://brill.com/view/journals/jwl/4/3/article-p350_4.xml
Secondary URL Description: BRILL website for article in _Journal of World Literature_ 4.3 (2019)
Access Model: Subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of World Literature
Publisher: Brill

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