Tradition as process in twentieth-century Latin American Arab poetry

Thesis

This thesis takes as its corpus of study a selection of Arabic- and Spanish-language Arab diasporic texts published by mahjar [émigré] and second-generation immigrant poets in Latin America between 1928 and 1961. The relevant authors are Bolivian-Argentine Lebanese poet Omar Estrella (1908-1991); Syrian mahjar poet Ilyas Qunsul (1911/14-1981), who emigrated from Syria to Brazil and then Argentina; and Uruguayan-born Lebanese poet Laila Neffa (b. 1923/25).

Scholars have been prone to identifying and disparaging a “conservative”, “traditional” tendency in Arabic-language Latin American mahjar poetry, conflating political, cultural, and literary conservatisms, and tradition with traditionalism. This common reading—or, as is argued, misrepresentation—of Arabic-language Latin American mahjar poetry has discouraged scholarship both on the subject and on the multigenerational and multilingual corpus of Latin American Arab poetry more broadly. The importance and specificity of Latin American Arab poetry, as well as the subjective agency of its creators, have historically been obscured by its position within an uneven global literary and cultural landscape. The notion that this poetry of South-South migration lacks both innovation and literary or cultural importance seems to stem more from Western development frameworks and paternalism towards the Global South than any critical engagement with the poetry itself.

Through foregrounding writerly agency and choice, and tradition as process, this thesis aims to elucidate the creative and political power produced and exercised by twentieth-century Latin American Arab poets over form and tradition. Attentive to literary and cultural processes beyond acculturation, influence, and domination, it seeks to enact methodological alternatives to the environmental and cultural determinisms and limiting vocabularies that riddle a range of either/or approaches to Global South and South-South literatures. Latin American Arab poets and their works are not easily, and ought not to be, dichotomously categorised as either radical or conservative, innovative or traditional, oppressive or oppressed.

Authors: Huang, M

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-kz9xbjpp2
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Latin American literature; radicalismo; Argentine nationalism; twentieth century; Spanish American literature; Arab diaspora; poetry; Global South; diaspora; Argentine literature; modernismo; Latin American Arab poetry; tradition; nahda; modernism; periodicals; mahjar; Uruguayan literature; Arabic literature; indigenismo; Bolivian literature; Arab nationalism; transnational literature; modern poetry; avant-garde
• Subjects: Migration; Race relations in literature; Avant-garde (Aesthetics)--Latin America; Poetry, Modern; Literature and transnationalism; Latin American poetry--20th century; Arabic literature; Modernism (Literature); Politics and literature; Latin American literature