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Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Volume 30, Number 1, Spring

2011, pp. 15-36 (Article)
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http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tsw/summary/v030/30.1.hartman.html

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An Arab Woman Poet as a Crossover Artist?

Reconsidering the Ambivalent Legacy of
Al-Khansa
Michelle Hartman
McGill University

Al-Khansa is celebrated as the first woman poet in Arabic and consistently upheld as an example of an accomplished and creative Arab,
Muslim woman. Born in pre-Islamic Arabia, al-Khansas composition of
poetry is believed to have spanned the period of the coming of Islam, and
she is often regarded as one of its earliest converts. Perhaps the best-known
female figure of the seventh century, her legacy includes not only Arab
women poets but extends to other Arab women writers and beyond. As she
is considered one of the finest poets of the period, a number of diwans, or
poetry compilations, have been devoted to her work, and a host of stories,
anecdotes, and critical studies form the backbone of the strong personality
attributed to this figure throughout history. From ancient, through classical, until modern times, al-Khansas work has been continuously studied
by scholars writing in Arabic; her poetry is still the subject of critical
inquiry today.1 Al-Khansas importance and resonance is not limited to
esoteric or high literary circles in the Arab world that would demand
a deep understanding of her copious poetic output. Indeed, in Arabic the
name al-Khansa evokes a range of symbolic meanings linked not only to
her poetry but also, more importantly, to her role as an exemplary Arab and
Muslim woman: her name adorns schools, hospitals, and even a somewhat
notorious jihadist magazine.2
In English, of course, al-Khansa is hardly a household name. A survey
of English-language scholarship on Arabic womens literature, however,
reveals that this poet is mentioned in nearly every work on Arab women
writers published in English.3 For example, an extensive survey recently
published by the American University in Cairo Press, Arab Women Writers:
A Critical Reference Guide, 1873-1999, opens with a reference to al-Khansa
as a point of origin.4 Not only academic works in English underline her
importance. In twin articles published in Ms. Magazine and the Washington
Report on Middle East Affairs, Bouthaina Shaaban invokes al-Khansa as
a literary foremother to emphasize the long legacy of women writers in
Arabic to readers unaware of this past.5
Perhaps even more interesting is the large number of scholarly works
Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Spring 2011), pp. 15-36. University of Tulsa, 2011. All
rights to reproduction in any form are reserved.

published about Arab and Muslim women in a wide range of non-literary

fields that, while not discussing her at any length, refer to al-Khansa in a
variety of ways to activate some of her potent symbolic meanings.6 Further,
a number of general literary anthologies of world literature, womens
literature, and other wide-ranging categories include entries on al-Khansa
and translations of her poetry.7 All of these examples demonstrate the
metonymic power that al-Khansa has to represent Arab women in a wide
range of locations in English-language scholarship.
It is safe to claim therefore that al-Khansa is widely referred to and
upheld as an exemplary Arab woman poet in English-language scholarship
and knowledge production about Arab women writers. This status reflects
her position in Arabic, but as this article will argue, diverges from it in
important ways, producing an extremely different figure in English translation. The near absence of serious studies of her work in English,8 coupled
with the frequent invocations of her name, leads to a series of provocative
questions: How does a poet whose oeuvre is limited to a large but rather
homogenous collection of poetrynearly all of it marathi (elegies) about
one man fallen in battlemanage to become such a frequently cited representative of an Arab women writer to an English-language audience? How
then does a little-translated and rarely studied poet from seventh-century
Arabia manage to cross over as an exemplary figure in scholarship on Arab
and Muslim women in general? Why is her poetry included in general
anthologies of literature from around the world as one of extremely few
examples of creative work by Arab authors across time and space?
This study frames the questions above in the context of the reception
of al-Khansa as an exemplary and exceptional Arab woman poet. I argue
that this reception is inseparable from larger issues related to the transformations that she and her poetry undergo in translation into English. In
turn, I propose that this situation is not unique to al-Khansa but rather
that her transformation through translation itself exemplifies a process that
Arab women artists who have successfully crossed over into English have
undergone. Reception studies of other Arab women poets and writers have
demonstrated this process at work in relation to the dynamics of translating, editing, publishing, and teaching Arab women writers in English.9 One
particularly pertinent case is Nawal El Saadawi, consistently portrayed in
the West as a lone feminist crusader for womens rights in the Middle East.
Amal Amirehs reception study of Saadawi has demonstrated in great detail
how translation into English has changed her work, its messages, and her
image. Mohja Kahf has similarly shown how the translation and editing
of the memoirs of early feminist Huda Shaarawi significantly change this
work, emphasizing her estrangement from her society and her difference
from other women. My study engages and builds upon these previous studies that demonstrate how particular images of the Arab woman are con16 TSWL, 30.1, Spring 2011

structed through translation into English, especially in marking successful,

creative women as somehow exceptions to the Orientalist stereotype of
the oppressed woman. The collusion of white, liberal feminist ideology, the
racialization of Arab women marked as Other, and the lingering legacies of
Orientalism are all at play in producing particular images of Arab women
in English translation.
In this study, I will specifically concentrate on some of the ways in which
essentialized notions of gendered and racialized categories intersecting with
Orientalist ideas underlie the translation and reception of al-Khansa and
her poetry in English. I will further suggest some of the ways that complex intersections of assumptions about the category Arab woman poet
produce these essentialized notions. In close analyses of the texts written
about al-Khansa, I will show how her English-language reception reinforces the very stereotypes and misconceptions that build these complex
intersections. In order to do this, I will probe the issues of problematic
(mis)translations, the understanding of a poet as exemplary and exceptional, and stereotypes about Arabs, women, and Arab women. I will show
howsimilarly to other exemplary and exceptional Arab women writers
and feminists who have been translated into English, such as Saadawi and
Shaarawithe major problem in the process through which al-Khansa
travels into English translation is that she is divested of contexts, which
might provide different ways of understanding her and her work.
In a study comparing al-Khansa to contemporary Palestinian elegist
Fadwa Tuqan, Terri DeYoung proposes that all modern Arab women
writers would have found it difficult to avoid confronting at one time or
another the ambivalent legacy of al-Khansa.10 Part of what DeYoung
is pointing to here is how al-Khansa is so lionized as to have become a
figure that is beyond discussion and critique. Her stature is connected to
her specific poetic outputmourning poems for her dead brothersand
the implications of Arab womens verse being lauded when its primary
function is celebrating death on the battlefield. The ambivalent legacy
of this celebration of war and death that DeYoung emphasizes in the case
of Tuqan is clearly linked to a range of contemporary issues in a time of
ongoing war and occupation. She points out that if women are limited to
producing mourning poetry celebrating men, they cannot work with other
modes of creative expression. Here, I would add that readers of English who
wish to read and understand al-Khansa confront this same question from
their own positionality in a world where wars are still being waged in Arab
countries and also confront an additional, ambivalent legacy. The translations and representations of al-Khansa and her work reveal a number of
problems central to understanding the politics of translation of women
writers from Arabic to English. As I highlighted above, al-Khansa is not
alone in representing problematic translation politics and practices. The
17

discourse around Arab women in English and the exigencies of publishing

and marketing to an English-reading audience shape not only what works
are chosen for translation but also how works are translated, marketed,
and promoted as representative. This study will argue that examining
al-Khansas reception in English can help us to think through a number
of issues related to the interest in and ambivalence around her. It begins
with the issue of translation and representation, pointing out ways in which
al-Khansa has been transformed in the English-language environment.
This discussion will lead to a more detailed analysis of her as a literary
figure who is shown to be both an exception to her culture and a typical
woman. Here, I will probe how there is a profound difference between
thinking about an individual poet and her poems and understanding the
figure of a poet that has been constructed and seen through the lenses of
many generations. Finally, I will give some suggestions of how contextualizations, particularly in relation to genre, can help us to understand better
how al-Khansa manages to be a crossover artist in English translation,
while reflecting on what that means for knowledge production about Arab
women in English.
The (Mis)translation and Representation of al-Khansa, Literary Foremother
Nowhere is the construction of al-Khansa as an exemplary figure of
Arab, Muslim women more evident than in the 1977 volume, Middle
Eastern Muslim Women Speak, edited by Elizabeth Fernea and Basima
Bezirgan.11 Al-Khansas status as a towering role model for Arab women is
established in its opening pages by including her as the first of twenty-three
entries of Muslim women from the Middle East ranging from poets, mystics,
and singers to activists, novelists, and everyday women. This anthology is
one of the first to claim to give voice to Muslim women from the Middle
East by compiling an anthology of their stories and writings in English
(p. xx). Middle Eastern Muslim Women Speak is typical of other works that
use al-Khansa as a figure who lends authority to the notion that there is a
long history of active and productive Arab women. I dwell upon this particular anthologys inclusion of al-Khansa for two reasons. One is because
it exemplifies many other mentions of and shorter entries on al-Khansa
in English-language anthologies and studies of her. The second reason
is because this anthologys translation and representation of al-Khansa
demonstrate the ways in which a well-meaning feminist project to counter
the silence of Muslim, Middle Eastern women in English reproduces problematic Orientalist imagery about this early poet. It thus participates in
the production of a larger discourse around creative, literary women that
activates their exceptionality and uniqueness.
By placing al-Khansas section first, Middle Eastern Muslim Women
18 TSWL, 30.1, Spring 2011

Speak clearly accents her role as a literary foremother of later Arab, Muslim
women. The kind of discourse produced and reproduced about her here
reveals a great deal about how Arab, Muslim women are represented in
this particular work, which itself reflects problems of trying to speak for
women and give them a representative voice that is highly selective and
limited. This selectivity is first evident in the way in which the entry on
al-Khansa is presented. It labels her simply a poet of Early Islam, gives a
brief biographical account of the poet, and supplies an English translation
of one of the famous poems that she wrote upon the death of her brother
Sakhr (p. 3). On the page facing the text is a black and white reproduction of a photo of a completely covered, veiled woman sitting atop a camel
alone in a barren desert; it is labeled as being in the Empty Quarter. The
image is striking for a number of reasons. A woman covered from head to
toe in black sitting on a camel under the blazing desert sun is the stereotyped image of the backward, oppressed Arab woman par excellence. As
an accompaniment to what is described as accomplished poetry by a great
poet, the image makes little sense. The picture, of course, could not be of
al-Khansa herself, and thus a nameless, faceless woman sitting on a camel
is used to represent what she might have looked like or invoke the setting
in which she is presumed to have lived. The composition of the photo
with the lone woman silhouetted against the sand and its location in the
Empty Quarter reinforces further the idea of the harshness of desert life.
Even more importantly, though, it accents the notion that al-Khansa was
somehow a solitary female figure within this societyperhaps because she
lost her brother on the battlefield but also alone as an example of a creative
woman and exceptional poet. The idea that al-Khansa was a great poet but
singular in her achievements once again echoes the representation of other
Arab women in this anthology and elsewhere. They are set apart from their
societies rather than being depicted as creative women integrated into and
working within their societies.
The biographical sketch presented by Fernea and Bezirgan reproduces
quite a number of the most-frequently cited stories about al-Khansa that
reinforce this exceptionalism. This section cites two referencesone in
Arabic and one in Englishupon which the information presented is
based: Qadriyah Husayns Shahirat Nisa fi al-Alam al-Islami (Women poets
in the Islamic world) and Reynold A. Nicholsons A Literary History of the
Arabs.12 These scholarly works lend a certain historical authority to the
account of al-Khansa presented here. For example, Fernea and Bezirgan
cite her full name as Tumadir bint Amru al-Harith bin al-Sharid, a fact
seemingly agreed upon by almost all references to al-Khansa in English
(p. 3). They go on to report that she was born in Arabia in the period
before the rise of the Prophet Muhammad and later accepted his message,
becoming a Muslim. The entry links the deaths of her brothers in tribal
19

skirmishes to her conversion to Islam and cites her sorrow that they did
not live long enough to profess the faith (p. 3). It also reports that she
refused to marry until she found a husband of her choice, that she outlived
her three husbands, and that she mourned the death of her sons in battle
by considering it an honor that they died for Islam. Fernea and Bezirgans
narrative also includes the disputed, but frequently repeated, idea that the
Prophet Muhammad himself was fond of her poetry and asked her to recite
for him. In addition to these stories that are still invoked today to present
al-Khansa as a particularly Islamic role model for Muslim women, other
stories relate her ability as a poet and her personality as a feisty woman
willing to speak her mind. They tell of how she often participated in the
open-air contests where poets would recite their works and be judged. The
story goes that after reciting a line that was grudgingly accepted by a male
competitor who said, Weve never seen a better woman poet than you,
al-Khansa snapped back with, Dont you want to say that I am the best
poet, male or female? (p. 4).
These stories and anecdotes about al-Khansa are appealing and frequently reproduced. Their reproduction in the anthology exemplifies
how they are used in English-language works almost exclusively to show
al-Khansa as different from other women rather than, for example, to show
her as the best of many women poets or part of a thriving womens poetry
scene. They do not show how she excelled from within her social context
but rather imply that she somehow deviated or was estranged from it.13 This
distancing of al-Khansa from her context in this anthology as in so many
others, I would argue, again demonstrates how the construction of what it is
to be a woman reflects clearly the concerns of liberal feminists in Western
contexts who have absorbed a racialized, Orientalist legacy that depicts
al-Khansa as a role model who is the exception to the rule in the Arab
world, rather than trying to understand her within her context.
A brief commentary just on the sobriquet al-Khansa and how the name
translates her into English highlights the kinds of problems with her representation as an exemplary Arab womanparticularly how certain ideals
are projected from the present to the past and from English-language environments onto Arabic-language works. Most English-language studies of
al-Khansa translate and try to explain her nickname. None contextualize
it by noting that many other poets, male and female, are referred to by a
full name and a nickname or what these nicknames might signify. Typically
the names are simply reproduced, at times with translations or explanations
given. Fernea and Bezirgan explain Al-Khansas nickname in passing,
stating, She was considered talented and beautiful despite the slightly
turned nose which gave her the nickname of al-Khansa (p. 3). Many
English-language accounts translate the name directly as snub-nosed,
leaving its interpretation alone.14 A standard Arabic-English dictionary
20 TSWL, 30.1, Spring 2011

gives pugnosed as the definition of the word al-khansa, the feminine

form of akhnas.15
What neither the dictionary definition nor Fernea and Bezirgans assurance that she was considered beautiful despite her nose captures are the
more complex layers of meaning that such a nose has in the Arabic literary
imagination. In English, almost any mention of a nose in relation to ones
beauty is considered negative, but the same is not true in Arabic. In the
case of a pug nose, in fact, the animal conjured up is not the dog of the
same breed but rather the gazelle. Rather than an upturned pug nose, the
Arabic word al-khansa is a feminine form referring metonymically to the
flat-nosed animal, the gazellethereby necessitating a completely different interpretation of al-Khansas name.16 A nickname that unequivocally
emphasizes the poets grace and beauty in Arabic, when translated into
English, comes to suggest that she succeeded despite her appearance.
The relevance of a womans physical appearance to her poetry and
her role as a literary figure is called into question by this fixation on
al-Khansas nose. Such a connection between a creative womans beauty
or rather lack of beauty is one that is powerful in English-language environmentsGeorge Eliot being a case in point. However, the same history
does not apply to Arab women writers. Through the (mis)translation of her
nickname, this poet is further removed from the very contexts that can help
us to understand her and her poetry. Al-Khansas name in Arabic draws
upon (stereo)typical tropes of female beauty. As the gazelle, she is able to
be a poet and be creative but at the same time embody qualities of feminine beauty. Her exceptionality as a creative artist does not necessitate her
standing out somehow from other women as ugly or masculine. In this
way, in Arabic, her nickname makes her more, rather than less, integrated
into mainstream understandings of women. In English translation, by
contrast, al-Khansa achieves this status not in relation to beauty, but the
reverse. Orientalist, feminist assumptions about a successful Arab woman
standing opposed to her society here are reinforced in the (mis)translation
of her name. Her ugliness in English matches her exceptionality as a poet.
The Poet as Exceptional Woman / The Poet as (Stereo)Typical Woman
The role of al-Khansa as an exception to her cultureas a poet who
succeeds despite her looks, her background, and her situation rather than
in concert with itis reinforced throughout other kinds of anthologies
that include her poetry. Though Arab women tend not to be well represented in collections of womens writing, al-Khansa does appear in several.
I read these anthologies, in conjunction with academic scholarship on
al-Khansa, as producing the discourse around her in English. Anthologies
operate in genre-specific ways, and various anthologies participate in this
21

discourse differently; for example, Fernea and Bezirgans volume is meant

largely for teaching, and the more general works, which I will discuss below,
are also aimed at a wide-ranging audience. Though I analyze these works
together, it is crucial to underline how they each produce a version of
al-Khansa in ways that suit their own genre-specific needs.
The complexities of al-Khansas position within anthologies that
emphasize personal identification, ethnicity, language, nationalism, and so
on are accented in works that span huge time periods, such as A Book of
Women Poets from Antiquity to Now, edited by Aliki Barnstone and Willis
Barnstone.17 In this collection, al-Khansa is one of four women who are
categorized under the rubric Arabic in an anthology that brings together
more than three hundred poets writing in different languages from all over
the world (pp. 92-97). Laila Akhyaliyya and al-Khansa are both further
labeled under the category Arabia, while the other two poets writing
in Arabic are labeled as coming from Iraq; all are placed within the
temporal section devoted to antiquity (p. ix). Though half of the book is
devoted to the modern period (the other half to antiquity), no modern
women poets writing in Arabic are noted. Those who might be labeled as
Arabs are rather identified under the (colonial) language French and
then further by a nationAndre Chedid is included as Egyptian, and
Nadia Tuni and Vnus Khoury-Ghata are labeled as Lebanese in the
modern section (p. xiv).18
Similarly, The Penguin Book of Women Poets, edited by Carol Cosman,
Joan Keefe, and Kathleen Weaver, includes al-Khansa as the one classical example of four Arab women among more than two hundred poets;
the other three are the modern writers Fadwa Tuqan, Nadia Tuni, and
Samar Attar.19 The Penguin anthology makes clear that al-Khansa is
included not only to represent her society, but also because of her unusual
life, by referencing anecdotes such as her refusal to marry an old man and
her presence as part of a deputation to meet the Prophet Muhammad (p.
65). Once again, her representative function in these texts serves the interests of deriving factual information about her as a figure who is unusual and
exemplary. Through the choice of information presented, the anthologies
give precedence to understanding Arab society and womens roles in it over
a literary or aesthetic reading of al-Khansas poetry, or even a reading of
the poetry in relation to its literary and institutional context. The anthologies insist on holding up al-Khansa as exceptional within her culture and
as resisting rather than working within it.
In conjunction with representing al-Khansa as an exception, another
major English-language discourse translates her as a typical, or indeed
stereotypical, woman. This reading emphasizes her female identity as a
woman poet and an Arab woman poet in particular. It is clear in a number
of examples that critics and anthologists draw on a (stereo)typical recep22 TSWL, 30.1, Spring 2011

tion of womens writing that posits women as emotional. This type of

proposition has a broad-based, cross-cultural, and transnational appeal, as
Marilyn Booth has pointed out in relation to Somaya Ramadans reception in Egypt.20 The focus on delving into al-Khansas motivations for
producing poetry calls attention to a contemporary need for both a unitary
authorial figure and the desire to approach womens writing as an (auto)
biographical and a sociological tool to understand womens lives. In the
case of an Arab woman poet, these are only exacerbated by the traditional
approach of English-language study that mines Arabic literary texts for
facts and the need for an exemplary Arab woman to be the exception
that proves the rule of Arab female oppression.21
This impetus to understand Arab womens poetry sociologically comes
to light particularly in the discussion of al-Khansa as an elegist. Like other
female poets, al-Khansa mainly composed marathi, and most of her poems
were composed for her male relatives fallen in battle. Both male and female
poets in jahili (pre-Islamic) Arabia composed marathithough few women
in classical times composed poetry in other genres.22 One particularly notable feature of her oeuvre in comparison to that of other poets, especially
women poets, is that it is extensive. A large amount is extant, and a full
diwan of her works containing at least fifty-five poems was already collected
in 620 CE. Though she dedicated several poems to her brother Muawiya,
the vast majority of her lamentations were devoted to her brother Sakhr.
No Arabic or English source on al-Khansa fails to highlight this particular
factall studies of and references to al-Khansas poetry mention her love
for her brother Sakhr. The evidence for this love is the poetry itself, though
someincluding Oxford Professor of Arabic and specialist in classical
poetry Alan Joneshave rather ungenerously suggested that this is because
his name was relatively easy to rhyme.23
Indeed Jones, one of the few scholars who has produced a serious study
of al-Khansas poetry in English, follows this line of reasoning further
when he goes so far as to suggest that her copious production in the ritha
(elegiac poetry) genre was a product of her overflowing emotions. His
readings of the intricacies of her poetic language are deep and thoughtful,
providing the student of the language of pre-Islamic poetry a great service.
His explanatory device for her poetic genius is less so; he claims, Her
obsession with lament was all-engulfingunhinged does not seem too
strong a description of her personality (p. 89). Poet and scholar of Islamic
studies, Eric Ormsby echoes Jones by citing this quotation in full when
describing her in his essay Questions for Stones.24 Unhinged is an especially strong and loaded word, conjuring up centuries of representations of
women writers as subject to gendered hysteria. Even if their language is
less dramatic, most Arabic and English sources concur with Jones that ritha

23

is a particularly appropriate genre for women because women are by nature

emotional and thus writing poems that express these emotions suits them.
Introducing al-Khansa in Arabic and Persian Poems in English, Omar S.
Pound echoes this emotional explanation of her motivation to write poetry
in his brief biography of the poet: Al-Khansa refused to be consoled and
one feels that she did not want to be . . . . Her emotional sincerity and
power of lamentation come through 1,300 years later. Arabs still read her
for her simplicity of language and integrity.25 Connecting a womans poetic
or literary output not only to her looks but also to her feelings is far from
unprecedented in discussing womens literature and is by no means unique
to the study of Arab women writers. In any individual case of a woman
writer, such connections may or may not be true. Perhaps al-Khansa
was deeply disturbed by her brothers death. However, with little reliable
biographical information about al-Khansa dating from the period, the
information seems at best speculative and almost certainly misogynistic.
A close look at Pounds logic, moreover, is crucial for understanding the
transformation of al-Khansa and her poetry in English. Nowhere will you
find Arabs reading al-Khansa for what one might call in English her
simplicity of language. Al-Khansas use of language, like that of all poets
considered great in the Arabic literary tradition, is why she is respected as
a poet, and most would agree that her works use a language that is far from
simple. Indeed, though the Encyclopedia of Islam does fall somewhat into
the same trap of describing her poetry with the gendered adjective tender
(though to be fair, it also uses intense and violentwords that activate
stereotypes about Arabs), its entry on al-Khansa points out that her poetry
was renowned because of the way she reinvigorated the genre with new
expressions as well as stylistic and metrical embellishments.26 Even more
problematic in some ways is the underlying assumption by Pound that
emotional sincerity is what gives these poems their power rather than,
for example, her command of the literary form, evocative metaphors, or
genius with language. Pound echoes Jones, moreover, in his attribution to
al-Khansa of an almost pathological need to suffer when he claims that she
seems not to want to be consoled when faced with the horror of death.
This understanding of al-Khansas emotionality and love for her brother
as a gendered weakness that produces poetry is reversed but essentially held
intact in anthologies of womens writings that include al-Khansa. Rather
than undermining the assumption that her writing is connected to her
emotionality as a woman, these works still locate emotions as the source of
her poetry but also propose her emotions as a source of strength and inspiration. For example, the entry on al-Khansa in Cosman, Keefe, and Weavers
The Penguin Book of Women Poets states that it was her grief at the death
of her two brothers, which inspired her to write elegies (p. 65). Here,
al-Khansa is praised for her resilience upon the loss of a loved one because
24 TSWL, 30.1, Spring 2011

of her ability to turn her feelings into great art. In this line of argument,
al-Khansa wrote elegies commemorating her brother not out of emotional
weakness but out of emotional strength. A similar characterization in her
entry in Barnstone and Barnstones A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity
to Now characterizes al-Khansa as a fiercely strong poetearthy, wildly
imaginative (p. 92).
Jones, Ormsby, Pound, Barnstone and Barnstone, and Cosman, Keefe,
and Weaver all understand al-Khansas poetry through her personal characteristics, primarily her attachment to her brothers; her poems are meant
to represent her sensitivity, imagination, and emotions. This gendered
representation of al-Khansa and her poetry are reinforced by cultural
stereotypes of Arab women, and this representation can perhaps be identified as the major scandal of translating al-Khansa, to borrow Lawrence
Venutis term.27 One of the effects of using the example of al-Khansas
elegies for her brother as a singular contribution (or one of only two or
three contributions) by an Arab woman in a general anthology of womens
literature is to underline the notion that Arab women are overly attached
to their brothers. By including decontextualized poems of lament for a dead
brother, anthologies may inadvertently use al-Khansas poems to support
the notion that Arab women do not have minds of their own but were (and
are) held in the sway of oppressive Arab men. This decontextualization
closely echoes Kahfs analysis in Packaging Huda of the transformation of feminist Huda Shaarawis memoirs into English; her study details
how Arab men are removed from positive roles and influences in this text
through the translation process that changed Mudhakkirati (My Memoirs)
to Harem Years. She proposes that Arab women are allowed to play three
roles in English translationvictim, escapee, and pawn.28 The idea that
Arab women are pawns of Arab men, that they praise their brothers and
fathersallegedly the men who oppress thembecause they lack the
freedom or knowledge to do otherwise is one of a series of destructive
stereotypes about Arab women that persists to this day. A more thorough
and complex contextualization of gender norms, roles, and interactions in
relation to Arabic poetry is thus needed to make sense of why al-Khansa
would indeed write so many poems for her brother and how her oeuvre can
be understood in relation to other works of her era.
The emphasis on ancient poetry by anthologies of womens literature and
Arabic literature means that the images presented of Arab or Arabian
society are often distorted. Womens writing of this time is limited largely
to ritha, which is rooted in the context of its time and subjects its composer
to the generic demand of praising mens exploits in war. Including so much
of this poetry in anthologies with little contextualization thereby reinforces
twentieth- and twenty-first-century stereotypes about Arabs being obsessed
with war and death. Al-Khansa allows us to probe gendered ways of typing
25

Arabsas emotional and tender, as well as violent and intense. In the case
of Arab writers who are already misrepresented in Western media and elsewhere, this stereotyping serves to reinforce a notion that Arabs care little
for human life and even celebrate death. Indeed this article is a critique of
the lionization of al-Khansa in the Arab context as well, particularly by
women critics. Nuha Samara has questioned the glorification of al-Khansa
as a poet celebrating death in the context of the 1990 war against Iraq.29
Gender, Genre, and Mourning a Brother
The gendered understandings of al-Khansa rooted alternatively in sexist
and libratory assumptions about the connection between poet and poem
inform her reception in English. Moreover, assumptions about authorship
in our own era deeply inform this reception. This is true of course in both
the Arabic and English reception environments. The additional layers
present in English translation, however, reveal a different set of issues, all
of which rely on identifying the poets personal motivations for composing
poetry. This particular approach reveals less about the poetry or figure of
al-Khansa than it does about the critical world that is reading them. It
also obscures the crucial importance of genre to understanding al-Khansas
literary production. The lack of contextualization of her generic productionthe writing of elegies for a male family membermeans that her
poems in English translation, which will largely be understood in relation
to content and not form, read simply as laments for a dead man and his
heroic feats in battle. Stripped of additional nuances, such poems mean
little to a contemporary English-reading audience, but they do reinforce a
number of stereotypes.
It is not important here whether or not al-Khansa was devastated and/
or inspired by her brothers death. We do not even know that the poetry
attributed to a woman by this name was even composed by one, discrete
historical person. Indeed the person who is identified as the historical
figure al-Khansa is thought to have lived sometime around 600-670 CE
(or perhaps later), and her literary production thus dates to a period and
a place about which we know very little today. What I am suggesting here
is that it can be problematic to read poetry from this period as providing
direct, factual source material about life in pre-Islamic and early Islamic
Arabia. Reproducing information about this poetry in English translation,
let alone extrapolating from it knowledge about the personality and life of
the people who shaped it, must be treated with caution, acknowledging
the difficulties involved in reading these literary artifacts and the nuances
required.
The difficulties and need for nuances are only reinforced when reading these works in translation. Not only is pre-Islamic poetry generally
26 TSWL, 30.1, Spring 2011

extremely difficult to understand in Arabic, many of its peculiar beauties

seem to be impossible to convey in English. Scholars of translation have
indeed singled out this poetry as particularly challenging to move into
English, most notably because of its different aesthetic.30 Adding to the
difficulties of translation of Arabic literary texts into English in general,
the unfamiliar aesthetic and challenging lexicon of pre-Islamic poetry
present further problems for translation and publication in English.31
Poetry in general is considerably less translated than proseancient poetry
much less frequently than modern poetry. It is even rarer to find good
translations intended for non-specialist readers of this poetry published in
accessible volumes, with the stunning exception of Michael Sellss work,
especially Desert Tracings. Only a handful of scholars have reevaluated this
poetic corpus and worked to contextualize it without ignoring its literary
brilliance.32 Given that female poets face an additional burden of misrepresentation and stereotypes over male poets, the reception environment
for al-Khansa is from the outset fraught with difficulty. Within this larger
context of pre-Islamic poetry, it is then instructive to look at the specific
genre of al-Khansas composition, rithaitself one not always immediately accessible to a non-Arabic speaking audience. Indeed elegy is not a
poetic genre that speaks easily to an English-language reader today, but a
fuller understanding of ritha helps to provide a textured understanding of
al-Khansas production.
One crucial element missing in the dynamics of al-Khansas reception
in English is an understanding of the role of ritha in her society. Such
a generic context can thicken the understanding of al-Khansa and her
production, even for a reader limited to understanding al-Khansa through
the English language. Genre is always a key to understanding the interplay
of literary works in their social, institutional, and other contexts. In the
case of less well-known works, authors, periods, languages, and so on, a
richly textured understanding of the genre of literary production can be
the difference between a deep reading of the work and one that remains
largely superficial. Understanding genre, however, does not simply mean to
categorize works or see them in relation to others of the same category
merely to read al-Khansas work alongside other elegies, for example, and
compare them formally.
By genre here, I mean to emphasize not merely form strictly speakingthat is, the stylistic pieces that are put together to make a complete
puzzlebut rather the larger set of literary, social, and other circumstances
surrounding the work. Indeed, literary genres unite form and content in
typical constructs that draw their meaning from forms of interaction in
specific social settings.33 The expectations and role of a particular genre of
work in its social setting are what gives it meaning. It is therefore crucial to
avoid the temptation to focus merely on the aesthetic and formal qualities
27

of a poem to see it as an example of ritha. What is important is to understand the larger implications of the ritha genre, particularly in its gendered
meanings and function in society. Such a deeper investigation and contextualization of the genre reveals similar dilemmas of representation in the
politics of its translation from Arabic into English.
A different, more thickly textured reading of al-Khansas poetic output
suggests that it should be understood through the intersection of gender,
genre, and ritualized mourning. Rather than reading al-Khansa and her
poetic output as extraordinary, part of an unusual life, or due to the despair
and/or inspiration of a sister who loved her brothers fallen in battle, I will
highlight the ways in which ritha functioned as a genre in her social setting
in relation to womens role in producing it. The strictures and boundaries of
conventional poetry not only limit the bounds of creative production but
also must be used to interpret it. In the case of al-Khansa, such a contextualization allows a rather different literary figure to emerge.
What then are the characteristics and institutional implications of
the ritha genre that can give us additional insight into the poetry of
al-Khansa, allowing us to revise the English-language discourse about her?
To begin with, as the scholar of classical Arabic poetry Suzanne Pinckney
Stetkevych has argued more than once, evidence suggests that ritha was
likely composed and recited in pre-Islamic Arabia as part of a ritual of
mourning.34 Stetkevychs analysis of gender and ritha in her important
study of classical poetry The Mute Immortals Speak, for example, understands womens roles in the mourning process as linked to their production of this genre (pp. 162-65). DeYoung also underlines this idea in her
insightful analysis of al-Khansa, with a focus on the role of literature as a
social institution in pre-Islamic Arabia.35 Even the editors of The Penguin
Book of Women Poets mention this idea in passingAl-Khansas role as
a poet was primarily that of ritual mournera role traditionally belonging
to women (p. 65). Though they call attention to the gendered nature
of this role, they do not explicitly link it to the production of elegies by
women writers, as do DeYoung and Stetkevych. More recently, in Qasida,
Marthiya, and Diffrance, Marl Hammond has warned against the exaggeration of the social limitations placed on womens poetic expression. As
she points out, there are more ways in which to understand why women
may have chosen to write marathi than simply that they did not have other
options. Her argument hinges on the notion that we have been constrained
from understanding these poems as erotic because of incest taboos (as they
were usually written for brothers) and that we might consider the sexuality
expressed in these poems by expanding our understanding of sexuality as an
economy of desire that is not necessarily carnal (p. 144). Hammonds piece
also suggests ways to read womens poetry of this period beyond simply

28 TSWL, 30.1, Spring 2011

focusing on marathi and outlines how these poems can be read productively
with works of other genres.
Hammonds warning against exaggerating the limitations placed on
womens literary production does not contradict the suggestion that we
understand ritha in relation to ritual mourning, nor does it change the
fact that ritha is the major form in which extant poetry by Arab women of
this period exists. Al-Khansa would not have chosen ritha as a genre of
creative expression from among many other genres in the same way that
a modern writer chooses a genre. Evidence suggests that until relatively
recently, elegies were the primary form in which women were expected
to compose and that would allow their poetry to receive circulation and
acclaim.36 The kinds of analyses produced by Hammond, DeYoung, and
Stetkevych all suggest that womens marathi participate in certain kinds
of literary performances. This deepens the ways in which we can rethink
al-Khansas literary production, rejecting essentialist ideas that link the
gender of a poet to her literary production. If elegies were the preferred
genre of poetic composition for women and the one in which they most
excelled, and if the generic demands of marathi necessitated the mourning
of dead male relatives, particularly brothers, then to write hundreds of lines
of verse in this one genre for one dead brother person seems decidedly less
odd. It certainly would not make the poet unhinged. Writing copious
verses of marathi should perhaps be understood less as an obsession with
death or with her dead brothers and indeed, possibly, as the most appropriate outlet that a talented poet might have had for her gift and skill.
This line of analysis can also help to cool the heated speculations about
why al-Khansas poetry was almost exclusively composed for one man,
including the implications of a puzzling, over-blown, or even incestuous
relationship between her and her brother.37 As Stetkevych has pointed out,
though women did write marathi for other people, it was considered most
appropriate within the social function of this genre to mourn male relations
directly related to their fathers family.38 Women thus tended not to write
poetry for husbands and lovers and even in many cases sons, unless these
men were related to the poet through her patriarchal bloodline. Therefore,
it is not unusual that al-Khansa did not write poems for her husband and
sonsas Fariq suggests would have been more appropriateeven though
the information that we have about the life of the putative al-Khansa
reports that she married several times throughout her life and that sons
were born of these marriages. Her brothers connection to her patriarchal line would make him the more fitting object of her elegies than her
husbands or sons. This reasoning seems to go a long way further towards
explaining why al-Khansas poems were dedicated to her brother Sakhr,
and not to a series of other men to whom she would have been close, than
explanations based on her emotional attachment to him.
29

Reflections on an Ambivalent Legacy

So how then does al-Khansa cross over from Arabic to English? Though
most English speakers may not know this poet by name, she is consistently
invoked as a role model, foremother, and exemplary Arab woman within
writing on Arab women authors, scholarship on Arab women, and anthologies that include Arab women writers. I have argued here that this famous
female poet, understood to be one of the most brilliant women creators of
poetry in Arabic of all time, offers us a rich opportunity to understand a
variety of competing discourses about Arab women through her Englishlanguage reception. Certainly one of the reasons for her invocation as a
figure in so many English-language works is that she can inspire us to think
differently about the roles and literary production of women from antiquity
in the Arabian Peninsula. As a well-respected poet and creative producer
of poetry in such an early period, al-Khansa can help work against stereotypes of Arab women as passive and oppressed.
As this study has demonstrated, however, al-Khansas translation and
reception in English has reproduced some of these problems in its very
attempt to translate her to an English-reading audience. In pointing out the
underlying problems with the translation and reception of al-Khansa, my
purpose here has not merely been to wag a finger at the ways in which the
legacy of Orientalist fantasies about Arab women activate racist and sexist
notions, which then produce problematic images of this Arab woman. I
have also argued that we can work against these assumptions by developing a nuanced and contextualized approach to reading Arab women and
their creative texts, which engages the issue of translation directly. Such
critiques often lead people outside the field to shy away from discussing
Arab women for fear that any reading they produce will be Orientalist.
Orientalism, like racism and sexism, informs English-language discourse,
particularly when this discourse touches on Arab women. Rather than
avoiding or sidestepping this issue, confronting its problems directly and
discussing how it informs the translation and reception of Arab women will
help in both the study of this poet and her poetry and also in approaching
the study of Arab womens texts more generally.
I thus have proposed here that al-Khansa can be read as a case study for
feminist scholars in English-speaking environments to think about issues
introduced by the representation of women, particularly Arab women, from
the past as well as from the present. My hope is that this study will impel
us to contextualize, historicize, and think more deeply about literature and
literary figures. This project works against the grain of studies that would
reclaim al-Khansa in order to teach us about how things really were for
pre-Islamic Arabs or Arab women or to somehow prove that Arab women
poets were just as good as male poets. If we choose to read al-Khansa as
30 TSWL, 30.1, Spring 2011

an exemplary Arab woman poet, perhaps we can make an appreciation of

her poetry and its contexts a part of this reading. If her personality and
character were unusual, we can historicize this with more detail within her
time and place; if her poetry is so important, we can work to understand
the importance not only of her skills and talents but also her poetrys genre
and, importantly, the poetic institutions in which she participated. Perhaps
al-Khansa was a brilliant and creative poet and the ritha genre was wellmatched to her poetic sensibility. Perhaps she worked to master this particular genre, and writing so many poems to one man was a challenge to her
ability that she met with great success. With these suggestions, I hope to
have contextualized the figure of al-Khansa and her poetry as dynamic and
integral parts of social landscapes that can help us more deeply understand
poetry and the role of literature in its engagement with society, especially
in its gender dynamics. But most importantly, I have dwelt here upon how
the translation of al-Khansa and her legacy can shed light upon the contemporary English-language production of knowledge about Arab women.
It is partly because al-Khansa remains an enigmatic figure in a number of ways, both in her Arabic and her English-language reception, that
she is so interesting. Because she is a figure from such an early era, about
which relatively little is known, it is easy to project a range of meanings
onto her. This lack of information also leaves open a range of possibilities
for interpreting her ambiguous legacy for Arab women poets and writers
and feminist scholarship on them today. Al-Khansas poetry is elegy: it
celebrates wars, battles, death, and male heroism. How do we read womens
poetry and literature about war? Does this change in times of war? In wars
where women are not the protagonists, how do their engagements with
these issues matter? In a time of continued war and occupation in the
Arab world, these issues are pressing; feminist responses in the Arabic- and
English-speaking worlds are complex and themselves at times ambivalent.
Some further questions being asked in these contexts include: should
women be celebrating men who have fallen in battle or rejecting all connections to war and violence? What if these men died in self-defense, or as
an act of resistance to occupation? What does martyrdom on the battlefield
mean in the twenty-first century? How far should adulation of such figures
go? Today we continually see reactions from puzzlement to disgust to anger
in English-speaking contexts at Arab women who celebrate Arab men who
have fallen in acts of resistance to occupation.
Though the poetry of al-Khansa does not offer a direct response to these
questions, understanding the complex dynamics of her transformations
from Arabic into English can push us to think about which questions are
pertinent in a twenty-first-century world in which war connects the Arabicand English-speaking worlds in unequal exchanges of military power. This
connection is a somewhat different way in which to use al-Khansa as an
31

exemplary figure. Rather than being exceptional to her culture, or standing in metonymically for all Arab women as a foremother, or portrayed
as a strong and beautiful (or strong and ugly) woman, we can see her as
a particularly complex and useful example of how contextualization and
historicization of poets and their works can offer glimpses both into the
past and at ourselves. We are thus challenged to make the cross over, and
ancient poetry of the Arabian Peninsula can become relevantboth in
revealing more about gender in relation to the institution and production
of literature in this time and place and also in how we study and discuss it.
NOTES
I would like to acknowledge the support of the Social Studies and Humanities
Research Council of Canada for providing funding that allowed me to finish this
article, as well as the hard work of my research assistants Dima Ayoub and Nadia
Wardeh. I appreciate the thoughtful comments of the anonymous reviewers and the
friendly support of the editorial staff at Tulsa Studies in Womens Literature. Sincere
thanks to friends and colleagues who read and commented on this article: Layla
Dasmal, Setrag Manoukian, and Alessandro Olsaretti.
1
Classical examples include Ibn Qutayba, Ahmad Muhammad Shakir, and Abu
al-Faraj al-Isfahani; see Terri DeYoung, Love, Death, and the Ghost of al-Khansa:
The Modern Female Poetic Voice in Fadwa Tuqans Elegies for Her Brother
Ibrahim, in Tradition, Modernity, and Postmodernity in Arabic Literature: Essays
in Honor of Professor Issa J. Boullata, ed. Wael Hallaq and Kamal Abdel-Malek
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000), 45-75. For just a few modern examples, see Ibrahim
Awdayn, Diwan al-Khansa: Dirasah wa-tahqiq (Cairo: Matbaat al-Saadah, 1986);
Bint al-Shati, Al-Khansa (Beirut: Dar al-Maarif, 1957); Muhammad Jabir alHini, Al-Khansa: Shairat bani Sulaym (Cairo: Al-Muassasah al-Misriyah lil-talif
wa-al-tarjamah wa-al-tibaah wa-al-nashr, 1963); Muhammad Karzun, Al-Khansa:
Sirah tarikhiyah adabiyah (Hims: Dar al-Maarif, 1999); Yahya Abd al-Amir Shami,
Al-Khansa: Shairat al-ritha (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr al-Arabi, 1999); Abu al-Abbas
Thalab, Sharh Diwan al-Khansa (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, 1993); and Husni
Abd al-Jalil Yusuf, al-Badi fi shir al-Khansa bayna al-ittiba wa-al ibtida: Dirasah
balaghiyah naqdiyah (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anjilu al-Misriyah, 1993).
2
The jihadist magazine is called Al-Khansa; for a Western reaction to it, see
Sebastian Usher, Jihad Magazine for Women on Web, BBC News, 24 August
2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3594982.stm.
3
The list is too extensive to cite all of them here, but for references to
al-Khansa in works on modern Arab women writers published in English, see
Radwa Ashour, Ferial J. Ghazoul, and Hasna Reda-Mekdashi, eds., Arab Women
Writers: A Critical Reference Guide, 1873-1999 (Cairo: American University in
Cairo Press, 2008), 1; Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke, eds., Opening the Gates:
A Century of Arab Feminist Writing (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990),
xxvi; Nathalie Handal, The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology
(New York: Interlink, 2001), 1; Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Modernist Arab Women
Writers: A Historical Overview, in Intersections: Gender, Nation, and Community
32 TSWL, 30.1, Spring 2011

in Arab Womens Novels, ed. Lisa Suhair Majaj, Paula W. Sunderman, and Therese
Saliba (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 2-3; Mohja Kahf, Braiding
the Stories: Womens Eloquence in the Early Islamic Era, in Windows of Faith:
Muslim Women Scholar-Activists in North America, ed. Gisela Webb (Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 2000), 147-71; Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Womans Body,
Womans Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo-Islamic Writing (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1991), 128, 146, 169; Bouthaina Shaaban, Womens Forum:
What Are Arab Women Authors Writing About? Washington Report on Middle
East Affairs, February 1993, 36-37; Shaaban, The Hidden History of Arab
Feminism, Ms. Magazine, May/June 1993, 76-77; and Joseph T. Zeidan, Arab
Women Novelists: The Formative Years and Beyond (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1995), 10, 42, 43, 58, 79, 86. For references to al-Khansa in works on
Arabic literature more generally, see Aduonis, An Introduction to Arab Poetics, trans.
Catherine Cobham (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 16; Roger Allen, An
Introduction to Arabic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000),
70, 94; Ignc Goldziher, A Short History of Classical Arabic Literature, trans. Joseph
DeSomogyi (Hildesheim: Olms, 1966), 21; Robert Irwin, Night and Horses and
the Desert: The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature (London: Penguin,
1999), 25-27, 239; Verena Klemm and Beatrice Gruendler, eds., Understanding Near
Eastern Literatures: A Spectrum of Interdisciplinary Approaches (Wiesbaden: Reichert,
2000), 44, 56, 57; and Reynold A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (New
York: Scribner, 1907), 126-27.
4
Ashour, Ghazoul, and Reda-Mekdashi, eds., Arab Women Writers: A Critical
Reference Guide, 1873-1999 (see n. 3). Not only does the work open with a reference to al-Khansa, but the chapter on Lebanon by critic Yumna al-Id also
invokes her in its opening lines (p. 13). She recounts famous anecdotes about how
al-Khansa has been considered by some to be the best early poet, regardless of
gender.
5
Shaaban, The Hidden History of Arab Feminism, and Womens Forum
(see n. 3).
6
To give only a few examples of such studies, see Leila Ahmed, Women and
Gender in Islam (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 7, 141; Elizabeth Fernea
and Basima Bezirgan, eds., Muslim Middle Eastern Women Speak (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1977), 3; Mervat Hatem, Aisha Taymurs Tears and the Critique
of the Modernist and the Feminist Discourses on Nineteenth-Century Egypt, in
Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, ed. Lila Abu-Lughod
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 84-85, 203; Azizah al-Hibri, A
Study of Islamic Herstory: or How did We Ever Get into This Mess? Womens
Studies International Forum, 5, No. 2 (1982), 209; Naila Minai, Women in Early
Islam, in Women in Islam: Tradition and Transition in the Middle East (London: John
Murray, 1981), 16-17; Charis Waddy, Women in Muslim History (London: Longman,
1980), 70-71; and Wiebke Walther, Women in Islam From Medieval to Modern Times
(Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1993), 144-45.
7
Anthologies include A. J. Arberry, Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 38-40; Aliki Barnstone and
Willis Barnstone, eds., A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now (New York:
Shocken, 1980), 92-98; Miriam Cooke and Roshni Rustomji-Kerns, eds., Blood into
Ink: South Asian and Middle Eastern Women Write War (Boulder: Westview, 1994),
33

92; Carol Cosman, Joan Keefe, and Kathleen Weaver, eds., The Penguin Book of
Women Poets (London: Penguin, 1978), 65-67; Robert Irwin, Night and Horses
and the Desert, 25-27 (see n. 3); Nicholson, Translations of Eastern Poetry and Prose
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 18-19; Omar S. Pound, Arabic and
Persian Poems in English (New York: New Directions, 1970), 33-34; and Abdullah
al-Udhari, Classical Poems by Arab Women: A Bilingual Anthology (London: Saqi,
1999), 58-61.
8
The exceptions are Seeger A. Bonebakker, Mubarrads Version of Two Poems
by al-Khansa, in Festschrift Ewald Wagner zum 65, ed. Wolfhart Heinrichs and
Gregor Schoeler (Beirut: Steiner, 1994), 90-119; K. A. Fariq, Al-Khansa and her
Poetry, Islamic Culture, 31, No. 3 (1957), 210-19; and Alan Jones, Early Arabic
Poetry, vol. 1, Marath and Sulu k Poems (Oxford: Ithaca, 1992). Two excellent
articles, which are theoretically innovative and interesting, have more recently
appeared: DeYoungs reading of modern Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqans elegies
through the lens of al-Khansa in Love, Death and the Ghost of al-Khansa (see
n. 1), and Marl Hammonds insightful rethinking of pre-Islamic womens poetry in
Qasida, Marthiya, and Diffrance, in Transforming Loss into Beauty: Essays on Arabic
Literature and Culture in Honor of Magda Al-Nowaihi, ed. Hammond and Dana Sajdi
(Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2008), 143-84. Hammonds work is
excerpted from her doctoral dissertation (written under the name Martha Latane
Hammond), The Poetics of S/exclusion: Women, Gender, and the Classical
Arabic Canon (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2003).
9
See Amal Amireh, Framing Nawal El Saadawi: Arab Feminism in a
Transnational World, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 26 (2000),
215-49; Mohja Kahf, Packaging Huda: Sharawis Memoirs in the United States
Reception Environment, in Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third
World Women Writers, ed. Amireh and Lisa Suhair Majaj (New York: Garland,
2000), 148-72; and Therese Saliba and Jeanne Kattan, Palestinian Women and
the Politics of Reception, in Going Global, 84-112.
10
DeYoung, Love, Death, and the Ghost of al-Khansa, 51.
11
Fernea and Bezirgan, eds., Middle Eastern Muslim Women Speak (see n. 6).
Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
12
Qadriyah Husayn, Shahirat Nisa fi al-Alam al-Islami [Women poets in the
Islamic world] (Beirut: Dar al-katibal-Arabi, n.d.); and Nicholson, A Literary
History of the Arabs (see n. 3).
13
For examples of how this works differently in Arabic, see the modern examples of scholarly work on al-Khansa listed in n. 1. Al-Khansa is still seen as an
exceptional poet and role model in many cases, and the critiques often are infused
with sexist ideas about women poets and writers, but the idea that al-Khansa was
estranged or distant from Arab society as an aberration are not present.
14
See, for example, Eric Ormsby, Questions for Stones: On Classical Arabic
Poetry, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, 25, No. 1/2 (2001), 24; and Cosman, Keefe,
and Weaver, eds., The Penguin Book of Women Poets, 65 (see n. 7). Subsequent references to The Penguin Book of Women Poets will be cited parenthetically in the text.
15
Hans Wehr, Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, ed. J. Milton Cowan (Ithaca,
NY: Spoken Language Services, 1994), 304, s. v. akhnas.
16
Michael A. Sells, Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes by Alqama,
Shnfara, Labd, Antara, Al-Asha, and Dhu al-Rmma (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan
34 TSWL, 30.1, Spring 2011

University Press, 1989), 5-6.

17
Barnstone and Barnstone, eds., A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now
(see n. 7). Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
18
All of these authors might have been labeled as Lebanese, echoing another
problematic discourse that would set Lebanon apart as more modern than other
Arab countries. On the labeling of Andre Chedid specifically, see Michelle
Hartman, Multiple Identities, Multiple Voices: Reading Andre Chedids La maison sans racines, French Studies, 54 (2000), 54-66.
19
The editors incorrectly label Fadwa Tuqans place of birth as Jordan rather
than Palestine. They also anachronistically label authors who were born, and even
died, before 1948 as from Israel, which did not exist at the time.
20
Marilyn Booth, On Translation and Madness, Translation Review, 65 (2003),
48-49.
21
See Hosam Abou-Ela, Challenging the Embargo: Arabic Literature in the
U. S. Market, MERIP: Middle East Report, Summer 2001, 42; Booth, Translator
v. Author (2007): Girls of Riyadh Go to New York, Translation Studies, 1, No.
2 (2008), 197-211; and Edward Said, Embargoed Literature, The Nation, 17
September 1990, 278.
22
See Hammond, Qasida, Marthiya, and Diffrance (see n. 8); Dana al-Sajdi,
Trespassing the Male Domain: The Qasidah of Layla al-Akhyaliyyah, Journal
of Arabic Literature, 31 (2000), 121-46; and works by Suzanne Stetkevych, for
example, The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and Poetics of Ritual (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), and The Generous Eye/I and the Poetics
of Redemption: An Elegy by al-Fariah b. Shaddad al-Murriyah, in The Literary
Heritage of Classical Islam: Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of James A. Bellamy,
ed. Mustansir Mir (Princeton: Darwin, 1993), 85-106. Subsequent references to
Hammond will be cited parenthetically in the text.
23
Alan Jones, Early Arabic Poetry, 97 (see n. 8). Subsequent references will be
cited parenthetically in the text.
24
Ormsby, Questions for Stones, 24.
25
Pound, Arabic and Persian Poems in English, 73 (see n. 7).
26
Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. Bernard Lewis, J. H. Kramers, H. A. R. Gibb, E.
Lvi-Povenal, C. Pellat, J. Schacht, new ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960-2005), 1027,
s. v. Al-Khansa.
27
Lawrence Venuti, The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference
(London: Routledge, 1998).
28
Kahf, Packaging Huda, 85-86.
29
Nuha Samara, La li-Khansa al-madi, Al-Shahid, 68 (1991), 65.
30
See Andre Lefevere, The Case of the Missing Qasida, in Translation,
Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame (London: Routledge, 1992); Sells,
The Qasdiah and the West: Self-Reflective Stereotype and Critical Encounter,
Al-Arabiyya, 20 (1987), 307-57; and Sells, Desert Tracings.
31
On the general difficulties of translating Arabic into English, see Aboul-Ela,
Challenging the Embargo; Booth, On Translation and Madness; and Said,
Embargoed Literature.
32
See, for example, Hammond and Sajdi, eds., Transforming Loss into Beauty,
especially Hammonds chapter, Qasida, Marthiya and Diffrance (see n. 8); alSajdi, Trespassing the Male Domain; Sells, Desert Tracings; and Stetkevychs The
35

Mute Immortals Speak and The Generous Eye/I.

33
See Mikhail Bakhtin and P. N. Medvedev, The Formal Method in Literary
Scholarship (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 130-31; and
Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 259.
34
Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak, The Generous Eye/I, and also The
Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender, and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002). Subsequent references to The Mute
Immortals Speak will be cited parenthetically in the text.
35
DeYoung, Love, Death, and the Ghost of al-Khansa, 50.
36
For exceptions to this, see Hammonds doctoral dissertation, The Poetics
of S/exclusion (see n. 8); and al-Sajdis discussion of Layla al-Akhyaliyya in
Trespassing the Male Domain. Further research is needed to expand and nuance
our views on this issue and show further exceptions to the prevalence of womens
poetry being elegies.
37
K. A. Fariq, Al-Khansa and her Poetry, 212 (see n. 8).
38
She makes this point in several locations; see in particular The Mute Immortals
Speak and The Generous Eye/I.

36 TSWL, 30.1, Spring 2011