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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.
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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

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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.

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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.

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29 Ibid., 36.

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32 Ibid., 22.

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

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35 Ibid., 30.

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39 Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, 50.

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41 Ibid., 83.

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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.

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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.