Qindīl Umm Hāšim: Umm Hāšim's Lamp with the Author's Autobiography

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_book_535
dc.creator	Ḥaqqī Yaḥyā
dc.creator	Pennisi Rosa
dc.title	Qindīl Umm Hāšim: Umm Hāšim's Lamp with the Author's Autobiography
dc.type	Monograph
dc.language.iso	it
dc.description.abstract	Qindīl Umm Hāšim, ‘The Lamp of Umm Hāšim’, is the title of Yaḥyā Ḥaqqī’s collection of short stories, first published in 1944, that made the author famous. Its enormous success can be traced back to the novella of the same title that opens the collection. The novella, due to its themes and narrative form, perfectly synthesizes the nationalistic spirit and modern ideals that developed in the 1920s around the al-madrasa al-ḥadīṯa movement, ‘The Modern School’, and ranks among the classics of modern Arabic fiction. It is a formally and stylistically mature work that manages to communicate in a linear and concise manner – with a formally perfect style and language that is both symbolic and direct – the spiritual, psychological and cultural complexity of the multidimensional tensions that characterise modern Egyptian reality. In 1975, following numerous reprints, an integrated edition of the collection was published containing Yaḥyā Ḥaqqī’s autobiography, which constitutes a true original essay by the author. In his autobiography Ašǧān ʿuḍw muntasib (Concerns of an affiliated member), Ḥaqqī not only reports the most important events of his life, but also offers a literary manifesto in which he confides his ideological, stylistic and literary concerns to the reader. The autobiographical manifesto emphasises how through writing (and the short story, in particular), Ḥaqqī wants to ‘shake up the Egyptian people’ so that they become aware of the socio-cultural and identity-national values that art plays in the modern era. Both his autobiography and the novella The Lamp of Umm Hāšim complement each other in capturing all the details that make up the style, ideology, innovation and commitment of a modern Egyptian intellectual. The novella – concentrated in a modest narrative space, along with Ḥaqqī’s literary manifesto – indisputably finds its place among the Great Books of Arabic Literature.
dc.relation.ispartof	I grandi libri della letteratura araba
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/978-88-6969-598-8
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Venice University Press, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.issued	2022-10-14
dc.dateAccepted	2022-02-02
dc.dateSubmitted	2021-11-09
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-599-5/
dc.identifier.issn	2610-9492
dc.identifier.eissn	2610-8909
dc.identifier.isbn	978-88-6969-599-5
dc.identifier.eisbn	978-88-6969-598-8
dc.rights	Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution + Noncommercial + NoDerivatives
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
item.fulltext	with fulltext
item.grantfulltext	open
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Autobiography
dc.subject	Novella
dc.subject	Qindīl Umm Hāšim
dc.subject	Short stories
dc.subject	The Modern School
dc.subject	Yaḥyā Ḥaqqī

Monograph
open access peer reviewed

Qindīl Umm Hāšim: Umm Hāšim's Lamp with the Author's Autobiography

Yaḥyā Ḥaqqī

edited by

Rosa Pennisi Aix-Marseille University, France

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abstract

Qindīl Umm Hāšim, ‘The Lamp of Umm Hāšim’, is the title of Yaḥyā Ḥaqqī’s collection of short stories, first published in 1944, that made the author famous. Its enormous success can be traced back to the novella of the same title that opens the collection. The novella, due to its themes and narrative form, perfectly synthesizes the nationalistic spirit and modern ideals that developed in the 1920s around the al-madrasa al-ḥadīṯa movement, ‘The Modern School’, and ranks among the classics of modern Arabic fiction. It is a formally and stylistically mature work that manages to communicate in a linear and concise manner – with a formally perfect style and language that is both symbolic and direct – the spiritual, psychological and cultural complexity of the multidimensional tensions that characterise modern Egyptian reality. In 1975, following numerous reprints, an integrated edition of the collection was published containing Yaḥyā Ḥaqqī’s autobiography, which constitutes a true original essay by the author. In his autobiography Ašǧān ʿuḍw muntasib (Concerns of an affiliated member), Ḥaqqī not only reports the most important events of his life, but also offers a literary manifesto in which he confides his ideological, stylistic and literary concerns to the reader. The autobiographical manifesto emphasises how through writing (and the short story, in particular), Ḥaqqī wants to ‘shake up the Egyptian people’ so that they become aware of the socio-cultural and identity-national values that art plays in the modern era. Both his autobiography and the novella The Lamp of Umm Hāšim complement each other in capturing all the details that make up the style, ideology, innovation and commitment of a modern Egyptian intellectual. The novella – concentrated in a modest narrative space, along with Ḥaqqī’s literary manifesto – indisputably finds its place among the Great Books of Arabic Literature.

Published

Oct. 14, 2022

Accepted

Feb. 2, 2022

Submitted

Nov. 9, 2021

Language

ISBN (PRINT)

978-88-6969-599-5

ISBN (EBOOK)

978-88-6969-598-8

Keywords

Autobiography • Yaḥyā Ḥaqqī • The Modern School • Novella • Qindīl Umm Hāšim • Short stories

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-598-8

Copyright: © 2022 Yaḥyā Ḥaqqī. Rosa Pennisi. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted in unadapted form only and provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.