Jaroslav Stetkevych , Walid Khazendar (review)

Abstract

MLRy 100.4, 2005 1167 rather than masculinization, allows us a more nuanced understanding of the family's elevation to a privileged position as the logical outcome of hyper-gendered categories. By the same token, Haynes's model of masculinization has trouble making sense of why the state would so vigorously underwrite the production of musical comedy, a genre not only traditionally associated with female spectatorship but also one that, in Haynes's words, 'very particularly foregrounds the heroine and female as star' (p. 31). It is not masculinization tout court, but a growing insistence in the 1930s on a kind of gender consistency?manly men, perky girls?that more adequately accounts for a shift that produces such epic figures as Chapaev and Chkalov, on the one hand, and, on the other, the necessary but bitter-sweet domestication of Marianna Bazhan (Tractor Drivers). This leaves Haynes a difficultchoice: he must either write these female figures out of the Stalinist narrative or (as he rightlychooses) forge ahead in a somewhat contradictory fashion with an analysis of these pivotal female stars in an era of putative masculinization. It is not that Haynes is wrong; it is rather that his thesis about masculinization makes more sense as a subphenomenon to a larger demand for clarity (false clarity,of course) with regard to the sexes. The strength of Haynes's intellectual contribution has more to do with his lively and engaged discussion of Aleksandrov's and Pyriev's films, about which relatively little is written in English. This is where the value of the volume lies, and in its execution of this task it is a useful volume to introduce students to the major films of the i930sand 1940s. University of Pittsburgh Nancy Condee Arabie Poetry and Orientalism/Ash-sha'r al-arabi wal-istishraq. By Jaroslav Stetkevych . Ed. by Walid Khazendar. (Arabie Poetry and Comparative Poetics, Research Series, 2) Oxford: St John's College Research Centre. 2004. 122 pp. ?7.95. ISBN0-9544975-1-1. This slim volume consists of two papers in separate English and Arabie versions, belatedly reprinted fromjournals. 'Arabism and Arabie Literature' appeared in theJour? nal of Near Eastern Studies in 1969, while Arabie Poetry and Assorted Poetics' was originally included in a volume ofessays dated 1980. The editor justifies reviving them by invoking the threat to the literary element in contemporary degree programmes in Oriental Studies and warning of an 'ever-widening estrangement between Arabie literature?especially poetry?and English and other European literatures' (p. 7). There is a certain charm in observing a representative of 1960s scholarship struggling to defend the term as it was then understood. 'I cannot help but have the uneasy impression that no matter how large an amount of translations from Arabie literature we produce as we are used to produce them, our problem of purpose and self-justification will not be solved' (p. 14)?concerns typical of a 'gremial' (one of Stetkevych's favourite words) environment in which the radical Orientalism of Ed? ward Said and the no less radical translation theory of Lawrence Venuti were not even distant specks on the horizon. To note a 'static, undisturbed calmness' (p. 18) in Ara? bie degree programmes, then constituted along the same lines as those of Assyriology or Sumerology, is to ignore the political and commercial realities ofthe present no less than the fact that most undergraduates are no longer contracted to pore over faded copies of the Mu'allaqat nor required to be on an intimate footing with pre-Islamic terminology for the anatomy of the gazelle. Stetkevych's second essay sets out to chart the origins of Western understanding of Arab poetry. Goethe's familiaritywith the topic is taken to be deeper than is commonly assumed. Thus Katharina Mommsen's Goethe und die Moallakat (Berlin: AkademieVerlag , 1960) is criticized forrelating the poet's response to Anton Theodor Hartmann 1168 Reviews and ignoring his knowledge of William Jones's scholarly work. A temptation to overrate influence is excusable in the pre-intertextuality era; 'eng der Gedanke' is perhaps not so much a Romantic response to the notion of al-jahilia as a continuationof Sturm und Drang scorn forwords and concepts. This is not...