Digital Mythology and Arabic Literature: A Digital Archive to Study the Dynamics of the Reception of Greek Myths in Modern Arabic Literature

Project Information

DIGIMYTH

Grant agreement ID: 101065808

DOI

10.3030/101065808

Project closed

EC signature date 12 September 2022

Start date 1 December 2022

End date 30 November 2025

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 282 046,08

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI ROMA LA SAPIENZA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DIGIMYTH (Digital Mythology and Arabic Literature: A Digital Archive to Study the Dynamics of the Reception of Greek Myths in Modern Arabic Literature)

Reporting period: 2024-12-01 to 2025-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The reception of the Greek classics and mythology in modern Arabic literature is part of the process of cultural interaction between Europe and the Arab world that fueled the 19th-20th-century cultural renaissance, known as the nahḍah. The modern Arab interest in ancient Greek literature, influenced by the European “Hellenomania” of those years, was driven by the belief that Greek classics were essential for joining world literature. At the same time, the very assimilation of the category of “classics” led to the revivification of the Arab heritage, which included the translation and the re-elaboration of Greek knowledge chiefly during the Abbasid rule. Unlike the medieval focus on Greek philosophy and science, Arab modernity engaged more directly with Greek literature and mythology.
Although much has been written about the transmission of Greek knowledge to Arab sciences and philosophy during the first centuries of Arab-Islamic history, less attention has been paid to the reception of Greek literature and mythology in modernity, especially before the 1950s. With a few exceptions, most existing studies focus on later phases of reception, when Greek myths were already integrated into Arabic literary traditions. They therefore do not explain how, when, why, and which Greek myths made their way into Arabic literature, which one of the many meanings of the myth is conveyed by each text, and which is the impact of the extra-textual world on the re-configurations of the myths in each rewriting.
DIGIMYTH aims to fill this gap by examining the period from 1850 to 1950, expanding the focus beyond poetry to include lectures, translations, essays, encyclopedias, journal articles, drama, and school and university curricula. The project’s main objective is to create an open-access digital archive of Arabic texts referencing Greek myths, through which it analyzes the dynamics of their reception in Arabic literature. Additionally, DIGIMYTH seeks to foster academic discussions on the reception of Greek myths in non-European literatures and to stimulate a reflection in civil society about the concept of Greek mythology as a shared cultural heritage along the shores of the Mediterranean.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Thanks to its training and research activities, DIGIMYTH has made significant progress in achieving its scientific objectives. The project began with training in digital humanities at the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities (VeDPH), Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. This training provided the foundational knowledge needed to build the digital archive of Arabic texts containing references to Greek mythology. The basic DH training included courses on XML-TEI encoding, the use of oXygen, xPath, and xQuery, and relational databases. The project then continued at the American University of Beirut, where the fellow further developed his skills in comparative literature, reception studies and Arabic studies. Most importantly, he was able to gather the necessary corpus for the digital archive and the literary analysis at the Nami Jafet Library of the AUB. At Sapienza the fellow continued his training in DH, while focusing also on classics, anthropology, gender, postcolonial and reception studies.
Building on the skills and knowledge gained during the training at VeDPH, AUB, and Sapienza, the project refined the main objective of creating a digital archive into two main tasks. The first consisted in the development of an open and updatable bibliographical dataset containing texts on Greek myths and classics published between 1800 and 1950. Special attention has been given to cultural and literary journals, as they revealed key platforms for studying this phenomenon. The second task involved creating a digital archive of selected texts related to Greek mythology, after being digitised and digitally annotated. The dataset has been completed and published on Zenodo. The data collected and analysed allows us to understand the dynamics of how Greek myths were received in Arabic literature. The research revealed that the choice of myths and texts was influenced by several factors, such as the early 19th-century contact with ancient Greek literature as a gateway to Greek mythology, the direct and indirect contacts with European, mostly French, texts, and the renewed global interest in Greek classics. Additionally, the memory of the past Greek-Arabic interactions, especially during the Abbasid period, played a significant role. The research also highlighted the importance of cultural and literary journals, the efforts of individual intellectuals, the relevance of the specific place and time of reception, as well as the broader European historical and political context, including new archaeological discoveries and the rise of Arab national sentiment.
The project has also stimulated a broader debate, not only within Arabic studies but also within the field of classical studies. This was possible thanks to the participation in six international and national conferences and seminars, the organisation of an international workshop, and the publication of one peer-reviewed paper, where the fellow shared the first results of his research.
Regarding communication activities outside academia, the project was presented in the PCTO (Paths for transversal skills and orientation) addressed to high school students; in the MSCA info days addressed to PhD students; in the 2024 European Researchers’ Night open to civil society; during the events related to the performance of the play Jogging by the Lebanese Hanane Hajj Ali. The project has created its website (https://www.digimyth.eu/) which communicates the objectives, publications and events linked to DIGIMYTH to both scholars and stakeholders from civil society.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

DIGIMYTH has contributed to the advancement of the state of the art in the following ways. First of all, it has explored a corpus largely neglected by existing studies, thereby illuminating a hitherto unknown or little-studied cultural and literary production. In this exploration, the work of perusing and collecting texts within cultural and literary journals has been significant, because periodicals have proved to be a very useful platform for understanding the dynamics of the reception of Greek myths in Arabic literature. Further, thanks to its digital expertise, DIGIMYTH has produced a bibliographic dataset on Greek myths and classics in Arabic literature. In the absence of catalogues or similar works, these platforms will be a useful source of study and information for scholars and all those interested in the phenomenon. Finally, through the integration of comparative studies and historical-religious studies, DIGIMYTH offers a new perspective on the study of the reception of Greek myths in Arabic literature, looking at it both through comparison with similar cases of classical receptions in Europe and the world and in the light of the historical context in which it took place.

Salīm Fāḍil, Bilād al-Yūnān al-qadīmah (Ancient Greece)