Love and Poetry in the Middle East: Literature from Antiquity to the Present

Thursday, 13th October 2022 | 18:30 - 20:30

This is a book launch for Love and Poetry in the Middle East. Love has been an important trope in the literature of the region we now call the Middle East, from ancient times to modern. This book analyses love poetry in various ancient and contemporary languages of the Middle East, including Akkadian, ancient Egyptian, Classical and Modern Standard Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Turkish and Kurdish, including literary materials that have been discovered and highlighted for the first time. Together, the chapters reflect and explore the discursive evolution of the theme of love, and the sensibilities, styles and techniques used to convey it. They chart the way in which poems in ancient poetry give way to complex and varied reflections of human sentiments in the medieval languages and on to the modern period which in turn reflects the complexities and nuances of present times. Offering a snapshot of the diverse literary languages and their relationship to the theme of love, the book will be of interest to scholars of Near and Middle Eastern Literature and Culture. 

Dr. Atef Alshaer

(A Senior Lecturer in Arabic Studies at the University of Westminster). Caroline Rooney (Professor of African, Post-Colonial and Middle Eastern Literature at the University of Kent, School of English), and Dr. Mark Weeden (Senior Lecturer in Akkadian and Ancient Iraqi Studies at UCL), and potentially other contributors to the book.

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