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By Kurdish Book Club:
Kurdish Book Club presents a Seminar on ‘Mem u Zin of Ahmadi Khani’ by Dr Kamal Mirawdeli
- Sunday 14th April 2013 From 15:00 -18:00
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Birkbeck College, University of London, Lecture theatre B33*, Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7HX
As part of a series of seminars, the Kurdish Book Club is pleased to invite you to a seminar about a newly published book in English. The seminar, which will be held in Kurdish, will be chaired by Dr Rzgar Amin. Mem u Zin (Mem and Zin) of Ahmadi Khani is one of the important and well-known classical Kurdish literary texts, which has remained without a serious critical evaluation by the Kurdish experts or by foreign researchers.
According to Dr Mirawdeli, there has not even been a real definition of the work, which has wrongly been defined generally as a national epic. This, he thinks, is a tragic matter because Ahmadi Khani created his work as an attempt to establish his Kurdish people as a nation and facilitate the ground for them to appreciate and promote their language, culture and heritage. To try to fill in this gap, Dr Mitawdeli has accomplished in recent years a number of works addressing Khani’s Mem u Zin:
- Rendering the text into standard middle Kurmanji, published in Sulemani, Kurdistan, 2009;
- Re-writing the story of Mem u Zin as a modern drama by the name of ‘Shorshi Ishq’, ‘Revolution of Love’, 2012; and,
- Compiling a scholarly study of Mem u Zin in English published as a book of over 600 pages.
In the seminar, Dr Mirawdeli addresses his work, his methodology and the conclusions of his study, which includes:
- Critical review of the works published on Khani;
- Khani’s definition of his work, his methodology and his theory of Kurdish nationalism; and,
- Define the work as a drama, tragedy, according to Aristotle’s criteria of tragedy.
- Khani’s definition of his work, his methodology and his theory of Kurdish nationalism; and,
- Define the work as a drama, tragedy, according to Aristotle’s criteria of tragedy, explaining the four levels of meaning identified by Khani himslef: as a story, as a pretext for his philosophical ideas, as a literary innovation and as a national cultural institution.
Tel: 07939884687 E-Mail: kea1996@yahoo.co.uk kea@kea96.org
