Academic literature on the topic 'Contemporary Egyptian literature'

This article aims to describe the dynamics and contestation of Egyptian Islamic politics. The Islamic political movement carried out by a group of people in Egypt has changed the streets of existing democracy with the emergence of coups and assassinations that occurred in the Anwar Sadat era. It was a form of turmoil that occurred. This condition continued until the emergence of the Arab Spring in 2011. From all the dimensions that exist in Egypt, the root of all the turmoil is the unresolved religious and political problems that have made Egypt transform into a stagnant country until now. This study also shows that there is a transformation of Egyptian radicalism that has penetrated in all lines which hinders the progress of Egyptian democracy in which the mosques and campuses are used as the basis of radicalism so that they can influence the public's interest. This research is also supported by literature sources from books, journals, and comprehensive research. As for the results obtained from this article, namely the emergence of identity politics that occurred in Egypt due to the emergence of radical Islam, which had a major influence on Egyptian society, then the emergence of an authoritarian military system gave dissatisfaction to the Egyptian people in living as a state, resulting in destabilization between the democratic system and society globally

Popular literature occupies a significant part of the publishing market in Egypt and has had quite a large group of admirers for many decades. It is noteworthy that, in this sector, the series of Egyptian pocket stories published by the Modern Arab Association occupy a special position. It should be noted that the authors of the stories are heavily inspired by the latest scientific discoveries in many fields. In their works, medical facts, advanced technologies and genetic engineering not only set the background for the adventures of the characters, but are often the key elements of the plot and literary composition, as shown in this article.

Georges Henein was an important pioneer of modernism in Egypt, who played a critical role in the cultural and artistic movement of the country, despite critics who tried to distance him from contemporary Egyptian thought under the guise that he was a Francophone writer. This research presents Henein’s contribution to the historical, cultural, and national Egyptian trajectory, using some translated excerpts from his writings. The surrealist adventure Henein launched in Egypt was an important modernizing event in contemporary Egyptian culture. Although the influence of surrealist visions on Arabic literature was limited, the impact of these visions on the Francophone literature in Egypt was significant and evident in the work of poets such as Munīr Hāfez, Walid Munir, Horus Shenouda, Edmond Jabès, Mary Kavadia, and Joyce Mansour. In the field of fine arts, the impact of surrealism produced clear and essential modernist trends that have become characteristic of these arts.

During the first two decades of the 21st century an increasing amount of narratives termed as Arabic dystopian fiction appeared on the Arabic literary scene, with a greater part authored by Egyptian writers. However, what characterises/marks a work as a dystopia? This paper investigates the dystopian nature of a selection of Egyptian literary works within the frame of the dystopian narrative tradition. The article begins by introducing the features of the traditional literary dystopias as they will be used in the analysis. It then gives a brief overview of the development of the genre in the Arabic literature. The discussion that follows highlights common elements and identifies specific themes in six Egyptian novels selected for the analysis, thereby highlighting differences and similarities between them and the traditional Western dystopias. The article calls for a categorisation of Arabic dystopian narrative that takes into consideration social, political, historical and cultural factors specific for the Arabic in general, and Egyptian in particular, literary field. Keywords: Arabic literature, dystopia, dystopian literature, contemporary literature, Egypt, fiction, speculative fiction.

AbstractEgyptian law has maintained the Islamic system of interreligious law in which the Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities are governed by their own courts and their own laws. In the course of the twentieth century, however, these separate courts were abolished and the application of non-Muslim laws was restricted to matters of marriage and divorce, and then only if the non-Muslim spouses share the rite and sect of the same religion. In all other cases Islamic law applies. In addition, non-Muslim laws may not be applied if they violate Egyptian "public policy", a European concept which refers to the fundamentals of a national legal order. Egyptian public policy can be defined as those principles which are essential in Islamic law. In this article I analyse the status of the non-Muslim Egyptian in contemporary personal status law, based on Egyptian case law and legal literature. The concept of public policy plays a key role in understanding the mechanics of interreligious law in Egypt. I will argue that public policy serves as a legal barometer of the coexistence between Muslim and non-Muslim communities in Egypt.

Although literature and humor are two distinct areas, they complete each other. Indeed, this paper aims to examine the use of humor as a tool of resistance and subversion in contemporary Middle Eastern fiction in Egyptian novelist Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s al-Fāʿil (2008) and Luṣūṣ mutaqāʿidūn (2002). In particular, this paper strives to re-evaluate the main elements of humor such as satire, puns and quibbles. It highlights their use on thematic, stylistic and meta-narrative levels to better accentuate the experience of the characters and the re-emergence of all that has been repressed. Having adopted a structuralist approach to elucidate the intersection of humorous and subversive characteristics in the personality of abject characters, the textual analysis looks at the narratives’ strategies and the constructions of the protagonists. This study also examines how humor interacts with the stories’ main narrative threads and how it is generated by the textual structure, the characters and the deliberate use of Bedouin accent. More importantly, this study identifies the psychological and social functions of Egyptian humor asserting the need for adopting cross-cultural poetics when dealing with humor.

Studies of contemporary visual art in the Middle East are scarce compared with the vast literature on historical Islamic arts. In the past ten years, however, several notable books and articles have featured this important but under-recognized realm of visual culture in the region. These recent works often examine the ways in which art reflects social trends such as nationalism and struggles for religious identity. Karnouk's book is a worthy introduction to the world of contemporary art in Egypt, and is the first major English-language book of its kind on the subject (see also Wijdan Ali, Modern Islamic Art: Development and Continuity [Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997]). Contemporary Egyptian Art is a sequel to Karnouk's earlier Modern Egyptian Art: The Emergence of a National Style (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1988), in which she outlined the prominent artists and styles of the first half-century of the modern art movement within the context of Egyptian nationalism. This recent book picks up from the 1952 revolution and presents the major trends in art since that time while offering possible socio-political explanations for these trends.

AbstractThis paper challenges the dominant contemporary understanding of the Song of Songs. First, M. V. Fox's thesis, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, is tackled and found to be lacking: significant difference between the Egyptian songs and Canticles are identified, and weaknesses in the apparent similarities are observed. The categories Fox uses to demonstrate the influence of the Egyptian songs on Canticles are then applied Middle English courtly love lyrics, Shakespeare and Robert Burns and are show to be too generic to be meaningful. Secondly, I briefly outline some of the problems raised by a secular-sexual reading of Canticles and contemporary responses to these problems. Finally, I respond to the questions, What is wrong with a secular-sexual understanding of Canticles if that is the plain sense of it? And expose some of the assumptions that underlie a "plain sense" reading of Canticles.

In the aftermath the 25th January Revolution of 2011, two Egyptian dystopian novels stand out as particularly relevant: Utopia (2008) by Ahmed Khaled Towfik, and The Queue (2013), by Basma Abdel Aziz. Due to the absence of studies that pay attention to how gender relations are portrayed in Arabic dystopian novels, this study focuses on the literary representation of men and masculinities in Utopia and The Queue. This thesis uses narratology and content analysis in order to show that, although patterns of local masculinities are different in both novels, regional and global models of masculinity clearly point out men as controlling, violent and hypersexual, which is supported by multiple institutions, such as the state, media, and the religious establishment. The inclusion of relevant ethnological studies of masculinities in Egypt confirms that the social criticism of the novels include gender relations, and refers to the time in which the novels were written. This study points out the need for recognizing Arabic dystopian fiction as a valuable instrument that carries meaningful and intricate social criticism, as well as the need for the inclusion of gender as a category of literary analysis.

Questo studio esamina le strategie, i personaggi e i temi dell’umorismo in alcuni romanzi comici egiziani pubblicati a partire dagli anni Ottanta. Proverbiale qualità degli egiziani, la comicità è una valvola di sfogo nella vita quotidiana e una forma espressiva in diverse produzioni culturali. Finora questo fenomeno è stato parzialmente analizzato dalla critica letteraria, che si è concentrata sulla letteratura pre-moderna, aneddoti letterari-folklorici, teatro popolare e stampa satirica. In ambito moderno, la prosa satirica (adab sākhir) è relegata ai margini del canone, mentre la comicità viene riconosciuta, tutt’al più, come tratto stilistico in singoli autori. Alla luce della rivalutazione dei pionieri della prosa satirica moderna e di recenti pubblicazioni dallo stile comico, questa ricerca indaga i rapporti tra comicità, satira e letteratura nel romanzo egiziano contemporaneo. In particolare, individua un sottogenere di romanzi che combinano lo stile comico con qualità estetiche riconducibili alle coeve tendenze letterarie. Gli autori così identificati vanno ad affiancare i maestri della satira e dell’ironia riconosciuti dalla critica: da un lato, i pionieri a cavallo tra Ottocento e Novecento; dall’altro, alcuni scrittori attivi a partire dagli anni Settanta. A questo scopo, vengono esaminate le strategie comiche in quattro romanzi di Muḥammad Mustajāb (1938-2005), Khayrī Shalabī (1938-2011) e Ḥamdī Abū Julayyil (1968). Questi autori, che contribuiscono al rinnovamento delle forme narrative, hanno recentemente incrementato il loro riconoscimento critico, ma sono ancora poco studiati. Le opere selezionate, che sviluppano l’umorismo a livello tematico, stilistico e meta-narrativo, sono accumunate dall’attenzione per personaggi eccentrici in comunità marginali e offrono una rappresentazione critica della società contemporanea. Avvalendosi dell’apporto teorico degli humour studies e della narratologia, l’analisi testuale di questi romanzi indaga le strategie narrative, la costruzione dei personaggi comici, l’intertestualità e il linguaggio. Inoltre, esamina le affinità tematiche e stilistiche, nonché le funzioni della comicità all’interno di questo filone narrativo. L’attenzione è posta sulla rielaborazione di modelli compositivi tradizionali (turāth) e dell’umorismo popolare all’interno dei romanzi. Il primo capitolo passa in rassegna le principali teorie del comico applicate all’analisi letteraria e alcuni recenti studi sull’umorismo nella letteratura araba. Il secondo capitolo motiva la selezione del corpus, nel contesto del romanzo e della satira egiziana, e illustra le modalità di analisi. I capitoli dal terzo al sesto sono dedicati ciascuno allo studio di un romanzo: Min al-tārīkh al-sirrī li-Nuʿmān ʿAbd al-Ḥāfiẓ (1982) di Mustajāb, Riḥlāt al-ṭurshajī al-ḥalwajī (1981/83) e Ṣāliḥ Hēṣa (2000) di Shalabī, e al-Fāʿil (2008) di Abū Julayyil. L’ultimo capitolo confronta le strategie comiche e le peculiarità stilistico-tematiche. Da questa analisi emergono alcune strategie comuni, come la struttura aneddotica, l’attualizzazione di personaggi comici proverbiali e l’accostamento di registri, compreso il dialetto egiziano e il linguaggio gergale. A livello stilistico, ricorrono l’immagine del doppio, ripetizioni e descrizioni fisiche grottesche. A livello tematico, gli autori si concentrano sulla relazione fra città e campagna, l’ingiustizia sociale e la rilettura ironica della storiografia ufficiale. La molteplicità di forme e personaggi in questo filone comico si inserisce nel rinnovamento del romanzo egiziano, rappresentando in modo giocoso o tragicomico il rapporto fra singolo e collettività.
Our study looks at characters, themes, and strategies in some Egyptian humorous novels published since the 1980s. Known for their proverbial sense of humour, Egyptians resort to comedy as a safety valve in everyday life and as a creative tool in many cultural productions. So far, the study of literary humour has focused on pre-modern literature, literary and folkloric anecdotes, popular drama, and satirical press. Modern satirical writing (adab sākhir) is placed at the margins of the canon, whereas humour is analysed as one of the stylistic features of some novelists. Having considered the re-evaluation of the pioneers of early-modern satire and the recent publication of humorous writings, our study examines the interplay of humour, satire, and literature in contemporary Egyptian novels with a comparative approach. In particular, it identifies a sub-genre which combines sense of humour and aesthetic qualities, which are intertwined with the contemporary literary trends. The novelists of our corpus, thus, join other masters of humour and irony already recognized by criticism: the pioneers of the late 1800s-early 1900s on the one hand, and some writers of the Generation of the Sixties on the other. To identify this sub-genre, we illustrate the humour-generating strategies in four novels by Muḥammad Mustajāb (1938-2005), Khayrī Shalabī (1938-2011), and Ḥamdī Abū Julayyil (1968). These writers have recently increased their critical recognition, but are still understudied. The novels of our corpus employ humour on a thematic, stylistic, and meta-narrative level. They depict eccentric characters in marginal communities and portray contemporary society with satirical criticism. Having adopted humour studies and narratology as a theoretical background, our textual analysis looks at the narrative strategies, the construction of characters, intertextuality, and literary language. In addition, it outlines the thematic and stylistic similarities, as well as the functions of humour in this literary trend. Our analysis focuses on the appropriation of the Arab cultural heritage (turāth) and of popular humour in these comic writings. The first chapter overviews the main humour theories applied to literary criticism and recent scholarship on humour in Arabic literature. The second chapter illustrates the selection criteria for our corpus, within the context of modern Egyptian fiction and satire, and our analytical framework. Each of the chapters 3-6 is devoted to a case study: Min al-tārīkh al-sirrī li-Nuʿmān ʿAbd al-Ḥāfiẓ (1982) by Mustajāb, Riḥlāt al-ṭurshajī al-ḥalwajī (1981/83) and Ṣāliḥ Hēṣa (2000) by Shalabī, and al-Fāʿil (2008) by Abū Julayyil. Finally, chapter 7 compares the humour-generating strategies and the thematic and stylistic peculiarities of these novels. We have identified some common strategies, such as the anecdotic structure, the use of stock characters in a contemporary context, and the juxtaposition of different registers, including Egyptian Colloquial Arabic and jargon. Recurrent stylistic features are the image of the double, repetitions, and grotesque physical descriptions. On a thematic level, these novels focus on the rural-urban relation, social injustice, and a re-reading of official historiography. With its variety of forms and characters, this humorous sub-genre fits into the innovation of contemporary Egyptian fiction, by portraying the relation between the self and the community in a playful or tragicomic way.

AbstractThis chapter offers a discussion of three texts by bicultural Egyptian writers: Waguih Ghali’s Beer in the Snooker Club (1964), Radwa Ashour’s Specters (1999), and Miral al-Tahawy’s Brooklyn Heights (2010). The three works are read via an autofictional lens, with focus on Ghali’s autofictional identity, Ashour’s autofictional threads, and al-Tahawy’s autofictionalizing experience. The study suggests that autofictionality can be identified in the texts in terms of genre as well as technique, demonstrating the potential of the autofictional as a literary strategy in negotiating identity, memory, and experience in the writing of Egyptian literature. Our reading of the three texts testifies to the affordance of an autofictional lens in reading Arabic literature and allows new insights into writing at the intersection of reality and the imagination.

The increasing challenges of enhancing public health for communities and managing stressful daily life style raised the call for finding new methods to reduce stress. The research problem is the lack of sufficient data investigating the impact of different characteristics and forms of gardens in terms of stress reduction and restoration benefits. Therefore, the aim of this study is identifying the restorative effects of biophilic design elements in Egyptian gardens. It investigates the main indicators for applying biophilic urbanism in different gardens and how to enhance it to achieve stress restoration for communities. The presented study followed a methodology that comprises three parts. First an integrative literature review for biophilic urbanism and biophilia application to achieve restorative design. Then identifying the likely relationship between biophilia and restorativeness. Finally, a case study research design approach for selected Egyptian gardens which are analysed in reference to concluded relationship and perceived restorativenss. The work points out the potential and effective incorporation of applying biophilic principles in Egypt to achieve stress restoration.