Levi Thompson
The introduction covers the state of modernist studies within Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literatures today, with reference to broader scholarship on global, transnational, and planetary modernism. It explains the logic behind the seven sections of the book: Adab , Poetry, Prose, Politics, Aesthetics, Easterlies (about connections to Urdu, Russian, and Central Asia), and Comparison. Most extant studies of modernism and modernity in the field focus on singular national contexts in the Middle East in relation to Europe and the Orientalist hangover that the region continues to suffer. Contributors to this volume instead consider instances of modernist connections in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish that exist beyond Western influence and can be traced back through local channels to Arab Islamic turāth (cultural heritage) rather than to literary and artistic encounters with the West. To flesh out the theoretical underpinnings of the volume, the editor discusses major novels and films in relation to time, modernity, modernization, and modernism to begin defining the parameters of the investigations to follow.