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The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse

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The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse

Citation:

Hafez, Sabry. The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse: A Study in the Sociology of Modern Arabic Literature. London: Saqi Books, 1993. Print.

Contents:

1. the infrastructure of cultural transition
2. The reading public and the change in artistic sensibility
3. A modern narrative discourse in embryo
4. The quest for national identity and the birth of Narrative Genres
5. Narrative Genres in search of an identity: Mahmud Taymur
6. The maturation of the new Narrative Discourse: Mahmud Tahir Lashin
7. The culmination of a sophisticated discourse: Hadith al-Qaryah
After formulating a theoretical foundation for the sociology of narrative genres based on the work of Bakhtin, Foucault, Goldmann, Jauss and Said, this work challenges the widely held assumption that Arabic culture stagnated before its contact with the West at the beginning of the 19th century. Hafez traces the revival to the mid-18th 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 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 sophisticated and mature narrative.

Author:

Sabry Hafez is a leading literary critics in the Arab World. He has published extensively in Arabic and English, with several books and numerous articles on the Arabic novel, the short story and drama. He is currently lecturer in Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies

Context:

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 the 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 a 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.

Thesis:

"The study breaks with the common propositions of either relating the geneology of modern Arabic narrative to the classical genre of the maqamah or perceiving it as an import from the West...posits the concept of genesis with its sociocultural dimensions versus the old concepts of origin, genealogy or mimesis. The aim of this study is to apply modern critical theory to answer the critical question: how new literary genres emerge in a particular culture at a specific time and why.

Methodology:

looks at the interaction between world-view transformations, change in artistic sensibility, the emergence of a new reading public and formation of a new discourse as that which set the stage for new narrative techniques such as narrative voice, description, etc.

Key Terms:

narratology

genesis of narrative form

Genre

Criticisms and Questions:

Is there a more detailed history of the 19th century maqamah revival that would describe its approach to imitation, and what was novel about it?

How has the pressures of Fusha flattened the Arabic novel as a microcosm of heteroglossia?

Notes:

Introduction
-short story - narrative genre which played a major role in changing the canons of taste and shaping new literary sensibility in modern Arabic culture. acclimatized new reading public to narrative conventions, because of suggestive devices and revelatory nature, short stories required more active participation from readers (as opposed to oral performance). prepared for lonely act of reading.

-If Arabic fiction came from maqamah, why did it have to wait 9 centuries, if it was imported from the West why did it need a century after European contact? linear geneology is reductive
- Bakhtin "poetics should really begin with Genre, not end with it. For genre is the typical form of a whole work, the whole utterance. Each element's constructive meaning can only be understood in connection with genre" Arabic fiction depended on context of other genres as it developed
-narrative discourse "can be defined as a diversity of social languages into distinct social dialectics, characteristic group behavior, professional jargons, generic languages, languages of generations and age groups, tendatious languages, languages of the authorities...this internal stratification present in every language at any historic moment of its existence is the indispensable prerequisite for the novel as a genre" novel must be a microcosm of heteroglossia
-genre - each work must have a preconstituted horizon of expectations ready at hand to orient the reader's (public's) expectations.

1. the infrastructure of cultural transition

- Wafa'iyyah salon, aka Majlis of al-Amir Ridwan al-Jalfi (1738) first modern cultural institution in Egypt, interested mainly in later Andalusian cultur and its interest in mystical poetry.
-Muhammad Ali started cultural infrastructure, but then ironically destroyed it. -
-Ismail's reign provided the basis of European egyptian elite in government, provided leaders of reform and nationalist movements of early 20th century
-Ismailie expansion of commerce and agriculture changed social structure of society, rapid social mobility and creation of middle class
-Khadive committed to Europeanizing the country was disposed by Europeans over debt in 1879.
comparison of two 19th century libraries
- Umar Makram (1755-1822) 325 books, 270 of which are manuscript, theological and linguistic topics. 1% science topics
-Ahmed Taymur (1871-1930) 5548 books in 1901, 21,000 in 1930. language, history, science

2. The reading public and the change in artistic sensibility

-four factors leading to new reading public: education, the rise of national and political consciousness, journalism, contact with European culture and thought.
-journalism was first form of new discourse to appear in Arab world, introduced new narrative voice with its "air of common speech"
-translations made after demand by public, trend towards literal translation taught translators about narrative langauge and narrative elements like plot, character, structure, etc.

3. A modern narrative discourse in embryo
-boredom with old oral stories, desire for new ones.
-by 1900 hundreds of full-length translations, 10,000 shorter pieces
-huge revival of maqamats in 19th century, like al-Yaziji's majma' al-bahrain (1856) and Fikri's (1872)
-Abdullah Nadim's historical and Islamic stories inspired Jurji Zaydan, abandoned ornamentation and embellishment, and the use of dialogue
-but also had unsophisticated didacticism, stereotypes, lack of variety
-al-Muwailihi's "Hadith Isa Ibn Hisham
-influential Iraqi magazine "tanwir al-afkar" in 1909 new narrative modes of discourse
-common denominator in all attempts awareness of new reading public which required new discourse.

4. The quest for national identity and the birth of Narrative Genres
-the need for an art form which would reflect political consciousness of a distinct national identity
-emergence of short story
-early success of American mahjarin
-Isa Ubaid discusses for the first time in modern Arabic literature realism and dialect
-strong influence of Russian literature on Arabic (especially through Iraqi writer Mahmud Ahmed al-Sayyid)
5. Narrative Genres in search of an identity: Mahmud Taymur
-kind of alright
-first came out in favor of using both registers, then changed course (part of lengthy debate among writers and critics in the 20s) (pg. 213)
6. The maturation of the new Narrative Discourse: Mahmud Tahir Lashin
-much better
-pre-nahda literature's relationship to social reality was rather tenuos.
-part of group known as "jama'at al-madrasah al-hadithah" heavily influenced by Russian lit.
7. The culmination of a sophisticated discourse: Hadith al-Qaryah

-story used to show how it was the culmination.

Fabula - basic storyline
syuzhyet - the order and method by which it's told
skaz - imitates internalizes the discourse of an individual
-Lashin uses skaz and characterization, granting city and country equal narratological weight, beginning of recognition of class, polyphony between city-dwellers, the sheikh, and the peasant--