Formal and thematic features jointly determine a novel’s relation to Islamophobia

Evidence

In this last chapter, I wish to bring together the two senses in which I have been exploring Islamophobia in this study: the formal and the thematic. My aim is to use two widely praised recent literary texts—Minaret (2005) by Leila Aboulela and The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) by Mohsin Hamid—to explore starkly divergent literary responses to the Othering of Muslims. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 440

Categorization

Category: Craft and Method

• DEFINE: Introduces the formal vs. thematic distinction that organizes the whole study
• XREF: Directly frames the reader’s hinge between Morey’s scholarship and their close readings of Hamid and Naqvi

Related

• Novels that critique Islamophobia still get co-opted by the market they critique. (similarity 0.87)
• Novels can reproduce or contest Islamophobia irrespective of authorial intent through formal features (similarity 0.87)
• Formal ambiguities can contest Islamophobia even in sympathetic texts (similarity 0.86)
• The novel contests Islamophobia primarily through form, not content. (similarity 0.86)
• Judging novels by sympathy toward Muslims misses how form determines ideological effect (similarity 0.86)
• Formal devices can both advance and expose texts’ Islamophobic agendas (similarity 0.84)
• Anti-Islamophobia novels can themselves profit from trading in Muslim stereotypes. (similarity 0.84)
• Literary criticism should read Muslim texts as intercultural negotiation, not alien-mind keys (similarity 0.84)
• Novels contesting Islamophobia are enmeshed in the very market that trades on it (similarity 0.84)
• The novel’s formal ambiguities can contest Islamophobic assumptions even in complicit texts (similarity 0.83)
• Islamophobia-resisting fiction can work head-on or by unsettling readerly expectations (similarity 0.83)
• The novel’s liberal individualist form inherently limits what it can contest (similarity 0.83)
• The novel form carries three centuries of secular individualism shaping its possibilities (similarity 0.82)
• Hamid’s punditry position as Muslim-world mediator shapes readings of his novel (similarity 0.82)
• A novel contests Islamophobia by making the reader structurally unsure where the menace lies (similarity 0.82)