This volume covers a wide range of related and interlinked topics beginning with re-assessments of postmodernism and postmodernist literary and cultural theory. Taking postmodernism as its starting point, it ventures glimpses beyond the postmodernist paradigm and on to new ways of conceptualizing the arts and cultural developments as such. Some of these discussions lead into reflections on autobiography and travel writing, but investigations in the latter fields are by no means restricted to interdependencies with inquiries into the problematics of postmodernism. Far-flung and complex as this volume's explorations are, they can still be easily captured and summed up in a single name: Ihab Hassan - who epitomizes them all (and then, perhaps, some). To honour him on his 80th birthday, these essays have been collected, with contributors from across the globe, again pointing to the three major aspects of the book: Ihab Hassan's postmodernist, global appeal - his untiring travels around the world - and his own, migrant biography from which his autobiographical works as well as his interest in autobiographical writing take their departure.
