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

Comparatively examines experimental techniques of narrating, representing, or writing monumental space.

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

"This highly engrossing study explores our paradoxical relation to monumental space as mediated by the post-imperial novel. It demonstrates the interplay between memorialisation and erasure, sacralisation and desecration, subservience and rebellious subversion, animism and petrification, combining fascinatingly detailed cultural and historical knowledge with illuminating and nuanced theoretical reflection. Rita Sakr not only reveals the transformative potential of monumental space but transforms our understanding of it through the original and timely ways in which she co-inflects the monumental with the post-imperial and brings a thought-provoking literary articulation to bear on the field of cultural geography." -- Caroline Rooney, Professor in the School of English, Director of the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Research, and RCUK Global Uncertainties Fellow, University of Kent, UK
"This is an incisive and sophisticated intervention into the thrumming theoretical space around monuments and their relations to memory, history, power and art.  With an astounding grasp on both major 20th Century novels (by Joyce, Mishima, al-Daif and Pamuk) and cultural theory (of Nora, Lefebvre, Mitchell and others), and always alert to the particular complexities of individual post-imperial contexts -  whether Irish, Japanese, Arabic or Turkish - Sakr confidently  builds a compelling set of arguments about how literature shapes the ways we experience and think about monuments.   From a unique transnational perspective, she generates an original interdisciplinary method, brilliantly bringing together literature and theory. A stunning debut." -- Finn Fordham, Reader in 20th Century Literature, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
"In this magisterial and compelling study, Rita Sakr reveals the degree to which the questioning of the status of memorials is a modern obsession and brilliantly uncovers the cross-cultural connections between writers as diverse as Joyce, Pamuk, Mishima, and al-Daif in their fictional interrogations of public forms of commemoration.  Her richly nuanced readings, which deftly intermarry historical, philosophical, and cultural geographical insights, startlingly demonstrate that the counter-memorial and the deconstructed monument are more attuned with modern tastes and values than any heroicizing tributes." - Anne Fogarty, Professor of James Joyce Studies, College of Arts & Celtic Studies, University College Dublin, Ireland