Intro -- Contents -- Part I: Background / Settings -- 1 Arab perspectives on the late Ottoman Empire -- 2 The simultaneity of the non-simultaneous -- Part II: Linguistic aspects The language of the Nahḍa -- 3 Morpho-semantic evidence of emerging subjectivity in the language of the Nahḍa -- Part III: Transitions: Continuity and rupture New attitudes / genres in the making -- 4 Adab as the art to make the right choice between local tradition and Western values: A comparative analysis of Khalīl al-Khūrī's Way, idhan lastu bi-Ifranjī! (1859) and Aḥmed Midḥat's Felāṭūn Beğ ile Rāḳım Efendī (1875) -- 5 Concepts that changed the world -- 6 What does it mean to design a plot? -- 7 From water-carrying camels to modern storytellers -- Part IV: The emerging subject seeking to assert itself -- 8 Even in a maqāma! The shift of focus from "trickster" to "narrating subject" in Fāris al-Shidyāq's al-Sāq ʻalà l-sāq (1855) -- 9 The modern subject sensing its agency -- 10 "Wa-hākadhā kāna ka-Iblīs": Satan and social reform in a novel by Salīm al-Bustānī (Bint al-ʻaṣr, 1875) -- 11 "Fa-ghrawraqat ʻuyūnuhum bi-l-dumūʻ...": Some notes on the flood of tears in early modern Arabic fiction -- Part V: The Nahḍa at its zenith Nation building and "Yes, we can!" enthusiasm -- 12 A manifesto of early adab qawmī: ʻĪsà ʻUbayd's programmatic preface to "Miss Ihsan" - Introduction and translation -- 13 Maḥmūd Taymūr (1894-1973) -- 14 The Modern School and global modernity: The example of an Egyptian ghost story of the mid-1920s (Maḥmūd Ṭāhir Lāshīn's Qiṣṣat ʻifrīt -- 15 Aspects of literary representation in Reşat Nuri Güntekin's Çalıkuşu -- Part VI: From "upswing" to crisis and demise: 100 years of Middle Eastern modernity - Thematic threads.

16 From the discovery of the "independent self" to its crisis: A condensed literary history of the agency of the subject in Middle Eastern modernity -- 17 Fading trust in the Nahḍa: Three Middle Eastern utopias -- Part VII: Turkish parallels -- 18 The 'riddle' ʻAşḳ-ı memnūʻ: Towards assigning the S̱ervet-i Fünūn movement a place in literary history -- 19 Early national literature in Turkey: Some authors and their novels -- Bibliography -- Publication history and acknowledgments -- Index.