CMLT 300 4 - The Arabic Novel from the 19th Century to the Digital Age

This course examines the genre of the novel as it developed in the Arabic-speaking world. We will begin by looking at the concept of storytelling as it figures in A Thousand and One Nights, a cornerstone of the Arabo-Islamic literary tradition. We will then move to the nineteenth-century nahda (Arabic Renaissance) and discuss the inception the Arabic novel at the crossroads of Western Enlightenment thought and the project of Arab modernity. The nahda unit will be followed by an exploration of the postcolonial Arabic novel and the tensions between the ongoing fascination with the Western novel and the push to forge an independent Arabic-language novelistic tradition. From the postcolonial Arabic novel we will move through units on the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and the “Generation of Defeat,” the Palestinian novel, the “new” Arabic novel of the 1980s, and the Arabic novel in the digital age. Readings include Zaynab (1913) by Mohammed Haykal, Men in the Sun (1962) by Ghassan Kanafani, Season of Migration to the North (1966) by Tayib Salih, Children of the Alley (1967) by Naguib Mahfouz, The Pessomptimist (1974) by Emile Habibi, and Girls of Riyadh (2005) by Rajaa Alsanea. (Group III) (Diversity, Writing Option)