The Reader in al-Jāḥiẓ: The Epistolary Rhetoric of an Arabic Prose MasterBy Thomas Hefter

Abstract

Scholarship on al-Jāḥiẓ seems to have experienced a fortunate revival in the last years. Three books devoted to the so-called father of Arabic prose were published in 2014: James E. Montgomery’s Al-Jāḥiẓ: in praise of books (Edinburgh: 2013); Peter Pökel’s Der unmännliche Mann (Würzburg: Ergon, 2014); and the study under review here, Thomas Hefter’s The Reader in al-Jāḥiẓ. Hefter’s book also inaugurates a new series published by Edinburgh University Press under the editorial care of Wen-Chin Ouyang and Julia Bray, the Edinburgh Studies in Classical Arabic Literature. Hefter’s study is without doubt an important contribution to Jāḥizian scholarship both for his innovative approach and the variety of the epistles he examines, many of which are among the least studied and discussed of al-Jāḥiẓ’s works. This book consists of five chapters, plus the introduction and the conclusion. In the long introduction, Hefter defines the goals of his work and discusses the theoretical framework used to interpret al-Jāḥiẓ’s epistles. Despite the title, the main focus of the book is on the role of the addressee in al-Jāḥiẓ’s epistolary writings. Following the studies of scholars such as Genette or Altman, the addressee is conceived of as an ‘intradiegetic narratee’ or ‘internal reader’ (p. 15) and treated by Hefter as a narrative device by means of which al-Jāḥiẓ engages with his audience and directs his readers. This rhetorical device allows al-Jāḥiẓ to leave to the reader ‘the task of discerning how the author’s dialogical relationship with him is refracted through what is said to the addressee’ (p. 17). The figure of the addressee and his relationships with the author—or one of his authorial personae—inform the reader’s expectations and their understanding of these works. It should be noted that Hefter is clear about rejecting discussion of the figure of the addressee in terms of his historicity; his goal is not to discern whether he is a real correspondent of al-Jāḥiẓ or a fictional construction, but rather to discuss his role within al-Jāḥiẓ’s epistolary narrative.