Monumental Space in the Post-Imperial Novel: An Interdisciplinary Study

There has been a proliferation in recent scholarship of studies ofmonuments and their histories and of theoretical positions that shedlight on aspects of their meanings. However, just as monuments marktheir territory by attempting to ensure the existence of boundaries, sothese discourses set a boundary between their authority as platforms onwhich the interpretation of monumental space occurs and, in thisrespect, the different authority of the novel. This study crosses thisboundary by means of dynamic interdisciplinary movements betweenselected novels by James Joyce, Yukio Mishima, Rashid al-Daif, andOrhan Pamuk, on the one hand, and various theoretical perspectives,history, and cultural geography, on the other. Through the specificchoice of literary texts that represent monumental space in atypicalpost-imperial geopolitical contexts, Monumental Space and the Post-Imperial Novel brings into question many postcolonial paradigms.

Sakrestablishes a two-way interpretive methodology between theory, history,and cultural geography and the novel that serves as the groundwork forinnovative interdisciplinary readings of monumental space.

Establishes a two-way interpretive methodology between theory, history,and geography and the novel that serves as the groundwork forinnovative interdisciplinary readings of monumental space.

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Rita Sakr is a Visiting Lecturer at University College Dublin, Ireland. She has published on Middle-Eastern studies, migrant writings, post-conflict literatures, and James Joyce. She is co-editor of James Joyce and the Nineteenth-Century French Novel (2011) and is co-editing The (1982) Siege of Beirut and the Ethics of Representation in Literature, Art and Journalism (forthcoming).

Abbreviations
List of Illustrations

1. Reading Monumental Space at the Crossroads of Disciplines
2. "broken pillars": Counter-Monumental Tactics in James Joyce's Ulysses
3. Burning Temples and Falling Empires: Unraveling Arsonists' Dreams in Yukio Mishima's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
4. A History of Violence: Martyrs' Square and the Fractured Space of Memory in Rashid al-Daif's Dear Mr Kawabata
5. Tabooed Spaces of Greatness and Shame: Monumentalization and the Representation of Terror and Trauma in Orhan Pamuk's The Black Book and Snow

Postscript Post-2011: Monumental Space and the Collapse of Arab Dictatorships

Selected Bibliography
Index