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Project

Gibran in Lebanese Nationalism: A Study of his Canonization and the Translation Flows of The Prophet

The Lebanese-American poet Khalil Gibran is the most famous Arab-American writer. His magnum opus The Prophet is widely read worldwide and has been translated into over 100 languages. The Lebanese revere Gibran as a national figure whose name has become synonymous with Lebanon. When scholars consider Gibran’s rise and popularity, they usually place a high premium on the universal spiritualism of his literature, and tell us how this constitutive feature gained him followings worldwide and provided a source of inspiration for the 1960s counterculture. Yet, they tend not to address how and why Gibran came to prominence as a symbol of the Lebanese nation, much less examine the implications of this national preeminence for the transnational circulation of his literature. In this study, I argue for a profound relatedness between Lebanese nationalism and Gibran’s canonization, and contend that the latter emanated from the confluence of the universalism of his literature and the political commitments of his Lebanese canonizers. This raises the following question: how did the dynamics of Lebanese nationalism influence Gibran’s canonization? In order to fully understand his symbolic significance for Lebanese nationalism, the study investigates individual canonizers (academics, performing artists, critics, translators, literary figures, immigrants, etc.) and institutional canonizers (cultural and academic institutions) involved in the transnational circulation of Gibran’s literature. It is argued that the romanticized representations of Lebanon in Gibran’s early Arabic writings and the universal spiritualism of his English oeuvre, especially The Prophet, proved appealing to Lebanese nationalists, so much so that they saw great value in propagating and conscripting his works to the dissemination of diverse narratives of Lebanese nationalism, particularly Phoenicianism, Maronitism, Syrianism, Arabism and Mediterranean universalism.

The scope of this thesis is twofold: macro study and micro study. The macro study examines how Gibran’s literature, especially The Prophet, was strategically used by Lebanese canonizers in connection with their efforts to promote Lebanon’s image and identity. The macro study proceeds on two levels. On the first level, it explores the strategies developed by three Lebanese institutions—the Gibran National Committee, the Kahlil Gibran Chair for Values and Peace at the University of Maryland, and the Center for Lebanese Heritage at the Lebanese American University—to promote Gibran’s literature as part of broader efforts to bolster national pride and confer international literary prestige on Lebanon. The scope of the macro study also includes examining the nationalistic motivations behind the production of multiple adaptations of The Prophet into films, plays and songs. On the second level, I focus on how different Lebanese groups congregated around the canonization project and viewed Gibran as a bannerman for Lebanon’s values, ideals and worldview. More specifically, I investigate how the censorship of The Prophet in Egypt prompted national and international canonization processes to exalt Gibran as a national figure, with due attention given to the factors that kept the book in circulation in Egypt. There follows an exploration of the influence of Lebanese publishers in modeling Gibran as a canonical author and sustaining the translation flows of The Prophet in both Lebanon and Egypt, with particular emphasis on their political commitments. Eventually, the micro study investigates four Arabic translations of The Prophet as sites of canonization and identity negotiation, focusing on the sociopolitical and cultural conditions which shaped the production of the translations. These translations were produced by Anthony Bashir (1926), Mikhael Naimy (1956), Tharwat Okasha (1959) and Yusuf al-Khal (1967). While bringing to the fore the complex relationship between Lebanese nationalism and Gibran’s canonization, the findings of this study help to highlight the dynamics at play in the exportation of literature.  

Date:7 Oct 2019 →  16 Sep 2022
Keywords:retranslation, translation history, The Prophet, sociology of translation, Khalil Gibran
Disciplines:Literary translation, Literary history, Translation and interpretation sciences
Project type:PhD project