The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse: A Study in the Sociology of Modern Arabic Literature

Sabry Hafez challenges the widely held assumption that Arabic culture stagnated before its contact with the West at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He traces the revival to the mid-eighteenth century and follows its development throughout the Arab world, showing how the emergence of a new reading public with its distinct 'world view' induced the process of the transformation and genesis of a new literary discourse. This is followed by a detailed study of the dynamics of this process and an outline of the various stages of the formation and transformation of the new narrative discourse until it culminates in the production of a highly sophisticated and mature narrative. The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse shifts the terms of the debate on the rise of narrative from formal analysis to an analysis of social formation, clarifying many of the issues, which have long dogged critical discussion. It changes the nature of literary history by overlaying its dry chronology with the vivid socio-cultural dimension and by achieving a fine balance between textual and contextual. It tests its major theoretical suppositions by tracing the historical development of narrative discourse as well as through a detailed and sensitive analysis of the short story in a manner that changes the nature of Arabic literary criticism and puts it on an equal footing with modern critical discourse in Western culture.