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Title: Ihab Hassan papers
Date: 1952-2000
Collection Number: MS-C005
Creator:
Hassan, Ihab Habib, 1925-
Extent:
11.5 linear feet
(29 boxes)
Languages: The collection is in English, with some materials in French, German, Spanish, and Japanese.
Repository:
University of California, Irvine. Library. Special Collections and Archives.
Irvine, California 92623-9557
Abstract: This collection documents the academic work of literary critic, scholar, and theorist Ihab Hassan. The bulk of these materials
reflect his work on American fiction of the later twentieth century, in addition to his extensive writings on postmodernism,
literary criticism, and cultural studies. The collection primarily contains holograph manuscripts, typescripts, offprints,
and reprints of Hassan's published monographs and articles, in addition to professional papers and lecture materials. Some
audio and video recordings are included.
Important Information for Researchers
The collection is open for research. Access to original audio and video cassettes is restricted; copies will be made for
researcher use.
Property rights reside with the University of California. Literary rights are retained by the creators of the records and
their heirs. For permissions to reproduce or to publish, please contact the Head of Special Collections and Archives.
Ihab Hassan papers. MS-C005. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
Gift of Ihab Hassan, 1987-2000.
Future accruals are expected.
Preliminary processing by Eddie Yeghiayan. Processing completed by Jeffrey Atteberry in 1998 and Kurt Ozment in 2001.
Ihab Habib Hassan is a prominent critic, scholar, and theorist in the academic study of literature. While focusing his scholarship
on the post-war novel, he was among the first to articulate a concept of the postmodern. He was born in Cairo, Egypt on October
17, 1925. The son of a civil servant, he spent his youth in Egypt and eventually attended the University of Cairo to study
electrical engineering. Upon graduation in 1946, he received the prestigious Egyptian Educational Mission fellowship and
left for the United States to continue his studies in electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Hassan has
lived in the United States ever since.
Hassan completed his Master of Science degree in 1948, but soon decided to abandon engineering for an academic career in literature.
He began a doctoral program in English literature at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his Master's degree in 1950
and his doctorate in 1953. Hassan began his professional career in 1952 as an instructor of English at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute in Troy, New York. In 1954 he obtained a position at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He was later
named the Benjamin L. Waite Professor of English and served as the director of both the College of Letters and the Center
for Humanities. In 1970 he joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee as the Vilas Professor Emeritus
of English and Comparative Literature, a position he continues to hold as of 2002.
During his time at Wesleyan, Hassan published work on contemporary and avant-garde literature, and he has continued to focus
on these themes throughout his career. The major publications from his early period are
Radical Innocence and
The Literature of Silence: Henry Miller & Samuel Beckett. In these works, he attempts to describe the characteristics that distinguish post-war fiction from the literature of high
modernism. Hassan continued to pursue the same theme in his
Dismemberment of Orpheus, in which he introduced the term "postmodern." Along with Jean-François Lyotard, Hassan was one of the first scholars to
articulate a conception of the postmodern, and he has devoted a large portion of his academic career to this. In his best-known
works, he describes formal characteristics of the postmodern, such as discontinuity, indeterminacy, and irony. During this
period, he also espoused a concept of the "critic as innovator." His major statements in these regards have been
Dismemberment of Orpheus,
Paracriticisms, and
The Right Promethean Fire.
Although Hassan has always been engaged in dialogue with the major trends of literary theory, he cannot be easily classified
as belonging to any specific school of literary criticism. During the 1980s, beginning with the publication of his autobiography
Out of Egypt, Hassan began to move away from articulating the formal characteristics of postmodernism. In particular, his book
Selves at Risk examines themes of quest in contemporary literature, and
Between the Eagle and the Sun focuses on cultural exchange between Japan and the United States. Hassan continues to provide insightful commentary on the
late twentieth century. As of 2007, he lives and works in Milwaukee.
Biography/Organization History
| 1925 | Ihab Habib Hassan born in Cairo, Egypt on October 17th. |
| 1946 | Immigrates to the United States to study engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. |
| 1948 | Receives M.S. degree from University of Pennsylvania. |
| 1950 | Receives M.A. degree from University of Pennsylvania. |
| 1952 | Holds position as instructor in English at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. |
| 1953 | Receives Ph. D. degree in English literature from University of Pennsylvania. |
| 1954 | Begins as an instructor in English at Wesleyan University and becomes professor of English in 1962. |
| 1956 | Becomes a United States citizen. |
| 1961 | Radical Innocence: The Contemporary American Novel (Princeton University Press) |
| 1963 | Aspects du Hero Americain Contemporain (Lettres Modernes) |
| 1966 | Fulbright lecturer in Grenoble, France. |
| 1968 | The Literature of Silence: Henry Miller and Samuel Beckett (Knopf) |
| 1970 | Joins the faculty at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee as the Vilas Research Professor of English and Comparative Literature. |
| 1971 | The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature (Oxford University Press) |
| 1973 | Contemporary American Literature, 1945-1972 (Ungar) |
| 1974 | Fulbright lecturer in Nice, France. |
| 1975 | Paracriticisms: Seven Speculations of the Times (Illinois University Press) |
| 1980 | The Right Promethean Fire: Imagination, Science, and Cultural Change (Illinois University Press) |
| 1986 | Out of Egypt: Fragments of an Autobiography (Southern Illinois University Press) |
| 1987 | The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture (Ohio State University Press) |
| 1990 | Selves at Risk: Patterns of Quest in Contemporary American Letter (University of Wisconsin Press) |
| 1995 | Rumors of Change: Essays of Five Decades (University of Alabama Press) |
| 1996 | Between the Eagle and the Sun: Traces of Japan (University of Alabama Press) |
Collection Scope and Content Summary
This collection documents the academic work of literary critic, scholar, and theorist Ihab Hassan. The bulk of these materials
reflect his work on American fiction of the later twentieth century, in addition to his extensive writings on postmodernism,
literary criticism, and cultural studies. The collection primarily contains holograph manuscripts, typescripts, offprints,
and reprints of Hassan's published monographs and articles, in addition to professional papers and lecture materials. Some
audio and video recordings are included.
The publication history of Hassan's writings is quite complicated. In numerous cases, he used the exact same or very similar
titles for very different works, but he would also rework essentially the same content matter under quite different titles.
As far as such distinctions can be made, the material has been grouped together according to the similarity of the content.
Very often, a particular work has both published and lecture versions, where the lecture version constitutes either an earlier
version of the published essay or a later rewriting of a published work. In either case, all lectures that have strong connections
with a published work appear with the published version. A few pieces were published on multiple occasions with a slight
change in content. In such cases, the essay has been placed according to the earliest publication date.
Certain conventions were used in the container list to indicate format and variant titles. Manuscripts not explicitly identified
as holographs are typescripts. Numerous essays are represented by draft, lecture, and published versions. Whenever possible,
the items were placed in chronological order to reflect the process of composition. When such determinations could not be
made, the published version was placed last. In all cases, the published title is used as a heading, and any item with a
variant title is listed under that heading.
A bibliography of Hassan's works compiled by Eddie Yeghiayan is available in Special Collections and Archives.
This collection is arranged in six series.
- Series 1. Early writings, 1952-1984. 3.6 linear feet
- Series 2. Later writings, 1985-2000. 4.6 linear feet
- Series 3. Conference papers and public lectures, 1952-1999. 1.4 linear feet
- Series 4. Book reviews, 1959-1997. 1.2 linear feet
- Series 5. Biographical material, 1996-1998. 0.1 linear feet
- Series 6. Teaching material, 1953-1997. 0.6 linear feet
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Hassan, Ihab Habib, 1925 -- Archives.
Critical theory -- Archives.
Criticism -- Archives.
Literature -- History and criticism -- Archives.
Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- History and criticism -- Archives.
Postmodernism (literature) -- Archives.
American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism -- Archives.
Genres and Formats of Materials
Sound recordings.
Video recordings.
Theorists.
Literary critics.
Critical Theory Archive.