Apter's Criticism Of Comparative Literature

Apter criticizes comparative literature as being self-contradictory in nature, since it purports to include all cultures and at the same time highlights national boundaries to realize its goal, which stresses a new exclusion. World Literature, as she puts it, is more inclusive than comparative literature:
World literature is the blue-chip moniker; benefiting from its pedigreed association with GoetheanWeltliteratur. World literature evokes the great comparatist tradition of encyclopedic mastery and scholarly ecumenicalism. It is an encapsulating model of literary comparatism that, in promoting an ethic of liberal inclusiveness or the formal structures of cultural similitude, often has the collateral effect of blunting political critique

Hassan, the translator of Kilito’s Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language: “Hassan recalls too that within much Islamic tradition, translators are readily held to be apostates and heretics; a class of interpreters worthy of punishment even if they also qualify for redemption” (.256). However, there is an important theological alternative to this claim. For example, the Prophet Muhammad ordered Zaid Iben Thabt to learn the Jewish language. Zaid said “ Prophet Muhammad PBUH ordered me to learn Jewish speech… I learnt it in half a month” (fatwa.islamweb.net). Moreover, Prophet Muhammad ordered Zaid Ben Thabet Ben A Dhaak Al Ansary Abu Kharejah to learn the Syriac language in order to read for the Prophet documents in this language . In the Holy Qur’an, God encourages people to get acquainted with each other, which implies learning foreign tongues and translating peoples’ cultures . Contrary to what Hassan has claimed, there have been many translations of the meanings of the Holy Qur’an

Cachia’s account of the Egyptian Mawwāl is not accurate as the discussion of the mawwāl of Shafiqa and Metwally will prove. Perhaps Cachia had not widened the scope of the study. “The discussion examines three versions of mawwāl. The first is the version of Abu Dira, the second is in an anonymous and undated booklet titled Hadīqatal-Uŝŝāq and the last version is an opening of a monger mawwāl from another anonymous collection”. Of the structural characteristics of the mawwāl /ballad, as seen in Shafiqa and Metwally, are: the dramatic performance; stanzaic structure; repetition; focusing on one event: Shafiqa and Metwally focuses on the incident of Metwally who avenges his honour by killing his sister who eloped only to be a whore (الموال القصصي ); dramatic narration (using dialogue rather than narrative): the narrator acts all characters of the mawwāl sometimes using direct dialogue, other times describing what happened using indirect