The Refinement of Passion and Morals in Arabic and Chinese Narrative Traditions (in Arabic)

Join us for an Arabic-language lecture by Bayard Dodge Distinguished Visiting Professor Wen-chin Ouyang, professor of Arabic literature and comparative literature at SOAS, University of London.

In Ibn al-Jawzi’s “Against Love,” love is presented as a matrix of desire, affection and passion, along with the effect these emotions have on a person’s behavior and relationships with family, whether pro-social or anti-social. Arabic and Chinese literary traditions tell stories about the social relations that form the basis of a just, and therefore happy, society. They do so by describing the consequences of loyalty or disloyalty among lovers and beloveds, husbands and wives, fathers and sons, kings and subjects, and brothers or friends.

This lecture traces the moral anxieties that Arabic and Chinese literatures share, and their visions of the ideal life.