Death in the Monastery: Visualising Emotions, Space and Performance in al-Tanukhi

Starting from her work on emotions and visualisation, I discuss and translate story no. 364 from Deliverance Follows Adversity (al-Faraj baʿd al-Shiddah), titled, in the modern edition, ‘He who sows misdeed will reap ruin’, focusing on how space and movement are described, and attempting to incorporate the performative aspects of the text in my reading of the narrative. I investigate whether and how the representation of space and movement may trigger the reader’s visualisation and drive her response to the narrative, at the same time deflecting her attention from other aspects of the characters’ actions.