Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-9pm4c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T04:12:19.926Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Arabic Bildungsroman: A Generic Appraisal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Nedal M. Al-Mousa
Nedal M. Al-Mousa
Affiliation:
Teaches in the English Department of Amman National University, P.O. Box 337 Al-Jbaiha, Amman, Jordan.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

“Does the Arabic novel exist?” With this provocative question, Hilary Kilpatrick begins an article entitled “The Arabic Novel—A Single Tradition?,” in which she makes clear that her question has been inspired both by the established regional approach most critical studies use in dealing with the Arabic novel, and by the absence of a continuous tradition of the novel as a genre in the Arab world. But, while underscoring variety in form, style, and subject, Kilpatrick, keen to provide an answer to her question, concludes in unequivocal terms that the Arabic novel as a single tradition does certainly exist: “It is written in one language, and [has] a shared cultural heritage and recent historical experience common to the whole area [which] providef[s] novelists in different countries with similar material. In this respect the Arabic novel is distinct in its subject matter from the African or German novel, for instance.” Although the conclusion is valid, it is based on his- torical and cultural generalizations rather than on a thorough study of novels from the Arab world. Nor does the platitudinous remark with which the quotation con- cludes help Kilpatrick make her case in a particularly convincing manner. The distinct nature of the Arabic novel, as this study will demonstrate, is best exemplified in what might be called the Arabic Bildungsroman. Its definitive, culturally determined themes and structure, distinctive basic tension, and established literary conventions to my mind suggest the presence in the Arab world of at least this kind of novel.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , May 1993 , pp. 223 - 240
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

Author's note: Research for this study was supported by Kuwait University.

1 Kilpatrick cites four examples to support her arguments: S. Idrīs's Al-fann al-qasasifi Lubnan (The Novelists' Art in Lebanon), S. Muṣṭafa's Al-qiṣṣa fī Suriya (The Novel in Syria), Yahyā Haqqī's Fajr al-qiṣṣa al-miṣriya (The Dawn of the Egyptian Novel), and ʿAbd al-Muhsin Ṭāhā Badr's Taṭawwur al-riwāya al-ʿarabiya fi Misr (Development of the Arabic Novel in Egypt).

2 Kilpatrick, Hilary, “The Arabic Novel—A Single Tradition?,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 5 (1974): 93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 The theme of the encounter between the East and the West in some of these novels has been dealt with by Issa J. Boullata. But Boullata's study does not concern itself with interpreting Arabic novels with reference to the conventions of the Bildungsroman. See Boullata, , “Encounter Between East and West: A Theme in Contemporary Arabic Novels,” in Critical Perspectives on Modern Arabic Litera-ture, ed. Boullata, Issa (Washington, 1980), 47–61Google Scholar.

4 Said, Edward W., Orientalism (London, 1978), 259Google Scholar.

5 al-Hakim, Tawfiq, Bird of the East, trans. Winder, R. Bayly (Beirut, 1966), 20–21Google Scholar. All references are to this edition.

6 Ibid., 12.

7 See Jad, Ali B., Form and Technique in the Egyptian Novel, 1912–1971 (London, 1983), 51–52Google Scholar. See also Starkey, Paul, From the Ivory Tower: A Critical Study of Tawfiq al-Hakim (London, 1987), 109–18Google Scholar. Both commentators interpret the novel as a record of al-Hakim's dramatization of the theme of the spiritual superiority of the East to the materialistic West.

8 Failing to take into consideration these factors, Paul Starkey goes so far as to conceive of Ivan as al-Hakim's spokesman: “In ʿUsfur min al-Sharq, for example, it is Ivan who serves as the main mouth-piece for al-Hakim's ideas,” Starkey, From the Ivory Tower: A Critical Study of Tawfiq al-Hakim, 126.

9 A1-Hakim, Bird of the East, 163.

10 Ibid., 165.

11 al-Ḥakīm, Tawfīq, Zahrat al-ʿUmr (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Lubnānī, 1975), 63Google Scholar.

12 Starkey, From the Ivory Tower, 116–18.

13 Morrison, S. A., “Islam and the West,” in Readings in Arab Middle Eastern Societies and Cultures, ed. Lutfiyya, Abdulla M. and Churchill, Charles W. (The Hague, 1970), 253Google Scholar.

14 Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim, Arab Discovery of Europe: A Study in Cultural Encounters (Princeton, N.J., 1963), 144Google Scholar.

15 al-Nūn, Dhū ʿAyyūb, al-Duktūr Ibrāhīm (Baghdad, 1978), 99–100Google Scholar. Translations from the text are mine.

16 The phrase is used by Patai, R., “The Dynamics of Westernization in the Middle East,” in Readings in Arab Middle Eastern Societies and Cultures, 250Google Scholar.

17 Laroui, Abdallah, The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual: Traditionalism or Historicism?, trans. Cammell, Diar-mid (London, 1976), 156Google Scholar.

18 ʿAyyūb, al-Duktūr Ibrāhīm, 101.

19 Ibid., 107.

20 Haqqi, Yahya, The Saint's Lamp and Other Stories, trans. Badawi, M. M. (Leiden, 1973), 17Google Scholar. All textual quotations used in this paper are from this edition.

21 Ibid., 31.

22 Ibid., 19.

23 Ibid., 7.

24 Ibid., 27–28.

25 Berger, Peter L. and Kellner, Hansfried, Sociology Reinterpreted: An Essay on Method and Vocation (Harmondsworth, 1981), 39Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., 40.

27 Ibid., 60.

28 Haqqi, The Saint's Lamp and Other Stories, 33–34.

29 Ibid., 36.

30 Ibid., 38.

31 Ibid., 21.

32 Ibid., 22.

33 Idrīs, Suhail, al-Ḥayy al-Lātīnī (Beirut: Dār al-Adab, 1986), 12Google Scholar. Translations of the text are my own.

34 Ibid., 87.

35 Ibid., 30.

36 For a discussion of the intellectual impact of Sartre's writings on Suhail Idris, see al-Saʿafin, Ibrāhim, Tatawwur al-riwāya al-ʿarabiya al-Ḥadithafi Bilād al-Shām 1870–1967 (Baghdad, 1980), 242–46Google Scholar.

37 Sartre, Jean-Paul, Existentialism and Humanism, trans. Mairet, Philip (London, 1948), 41Google Scholar.

38 Idris, al-Ḥayy al-Lātīnī, 214.

39 Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, 50.

40 The phrase is used by Ali, Muhsin Jassim, “The Socio-Aesthetics of Contemporary Arabic Fiction: An Introduction,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 14 (1983): 79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Ibid., 83.

42 “Salih, Tayeb as a Novelist and Critic: An Interview,” in Tayeb Salih: The Genius of the Arabic Novel (Beirut: Dār al-Awdah, 1976), 129Google Scholar.

43 Khālid, Mansour, “The Sociocultural Determinants of Arab Diplomacy,” in Arab and American Cultures, ed. Atiyeh, George N. (Washington, D.C., 1977), 135Google Scholar.

44 See John, Joseph, “The Life and Death of Mustafa Saʿid: Riddles, Paradoxes, and Ambiguities,” Abḥāth al-Yarmouk, 5, 1 (1987): 55Google Scholar.

45 Salih, Tayeb, Season of Migration to the North, trans. Johnson-Davies, Denys (London: Heinemann, 1981), 30Google Scholar. All references are to this edition.

46 See Harlow, Barbara, “Sentimental Orientalism: Season of Migration to the North and Othello” al-Abhath, 32 (1984): 75Google Scholar. See also al-Naqqāsh, Raja, “Tayeb Salih: A New Novelistic Genius,” in Tayeb Salih: The Genius of the Arabic Novel, 81Google Scholar.

47 Ibid. 125.

48 Salih, Season of Migration to the North, 146.

49 Said, Orientalism, 83.

50 Salih, Season of Migration to the North, 34.

51 Ibid., 159.

52 Ibid., 95.

53 Ibid., 53.

54 See Morrison, S. A., “Islam and the West,” in Readings in Arab Middle Eastern Societies and Cultures, 258Google Scholar.

55 Birbalsingh, Frank M., “Season of Migration to the West: The Fiction of Tayeb Salih and Ayi Kwei Armah,” al-Abḥath, 32 (1984): 70Google Scholar.

56 Salih, Season of Migration to the North, 49.

57 ibid., 160.

58 Allen, Roger, The Arabic Novel: An Historical and Critical Introduction (Manchester, 1982), 136Google Scholar. See also Nazareth, Peter, “The Narrator as Artist and the Reader as Critic in Season of Migration to the North,” al-Abḥāth, 32 (1984): 124Google Scholar.

59 Salih, Season of Migration to the North, 134. For a full discussion of the identification of the nar- rator with the hero in Mawsim al-Hijra ilā al-Shamāl, see Amyuni, Mona Takieddine, “Introduction,” al-Abḥāth, 32 (1984): 22–23Google Scholar.

60 Ibid., 49.

61 Ibid., 167–68.

62 Ibid., 150–51.

63 al-Faraj, Ghālib Ḥamzah Abū, Sanawāt al-Ḍayāʿ (Tunis: al-Dār al-Tunisiya l'il-nashr, 1980), 28Google Scholar. All references are to this edition.

64 Quoted by Morrison, “Islam and the West,” 257–58.

65 al-Faraj, Sanawāt al-Ḍayāʿ, 194.

66 Ibid., 195.

67 Ibid., 200.

68 Idris, al-Ḥayy al-Lātīnī, 285.

69 Gide, André, The Counterfeiters, trans. Bussy, Dorothy (Harmondsworth, 1982), 294Google Scholar.