Defamiliarizing Romance: The Arabic sīra in the English Literary Classroom

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which the Arabic sīra a genre loosely akin to the romance or chivalric epic can be incorporated into undergraduate teaching on medieval romance. Drawing on my own pedagogical experience and guided by ongoing critical work on decolonising and diversifying the curriculum, I demonstrate the values and challenges of bringing Arabic texts, read in translation, into modules that configure English literature degrees in UK higher education. I focus on Sīrat Sayf bin Dhī Yazan a dynamic sīra available in Lena Jayyusi's lively English translation (‘Adventures of Sayf ben Dhi Yazan’), that contains folkloric and chivalric motifs and themes recognisable to readers of western romances, including adventuring heroes, disguise and recognition, magic and the supernatural, and love. Here, I aim to show that comparative familiarity is an ideal tool to de-familiarise and reorient perspectives on ‘romance’ (in the broadest sense) in the classroom. Sīrat Sayf opens up a gateway to another geographical location, both historical and imaginative, another cultural and religious context, and another literary and linguistic tradition. I show the importance of multilingualism in teaching romance on ‘English’ degrees and the broader questions this raises about the stakes of reading in translation while also opening up ways of understanding—and steps to undoing—the structures that create and uphold canons, including medieval romance.