Occidentalism and the Egyptian Novel
Politics, Poetics and Modernity
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publishing:26th Dec '24
£85.00
This title is due to be published on 26th December, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
An analysis of the role and significance of Occidentalism in the Egyptian novel from the early 20th century to the 2011 Revolution.
This book examines Occidentalism, or the set of cultural, literary and political uses of ‘the West’, in the works of canonical 20th and 21st century Egyptian novelists. Beginning with the writings of Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Lorenzo Casini here traces the way that imaginaries and representations of the West became bound up with the notions of modernity and national identity with which Egyptian novelists grappled, from the works of Tawfiq al-Hakim to those of Taha Husayn. The book also explores the trope of the European woman as an embodiment of the free, modern, seductive West as an essential facet of Occidentalism in this formative period. The second part of the book examines the ways in which later novelists —from Latifa al-Zayyat and Yusuf Idris, to Radwa Ashur and Ahdaf Soueif— subverted dominant Occidentalist themes as a way of re-examining concepts of personal, political, and national identity. The author argues that these later novelists reacted to the changing political circumstances in Egypt, from Nasser’s rule and the slide to authoritarianism to the 2011 Revolution, to envisage different kinds of Egyptian political community with a more complicated and less binary relationship with the imagined West.
A fascinating and insightful exploration of the importance and many uses of the idea of the West in Egyptian literature, and an important contribution to our understanding of Occidentalism. * Alastair Bonnett, Professor of Social Geography, Newcastle University, UK *
In this fine study, Lorenzo Casini questions the well-worn oppositions between ‘East’ and ‘West’, ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ to reveal a pattern of Egyptian writers and thinkers – some well-known, others ripe for rediscovery—using the idea of Europe to reflect on their identity. His readings transform the connotations of ‘Occidentalism’ from a term that implies the servile imitation of imported ideas to a more muscular engagement that raises important questions about language, literature, the state, and society. * Ziad Elmarsafy, Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature, University of St Andrews, UK *
Timely and Insightful. Occidentalism and the Egyptian Novel is a cogent and original intervention in the debates about the role of the ‘West’ in the ‘Eastern’ literary imaginary and modernity. Lorenzo Casini moves the discussions of Egyptian modernisation outside the familiar frames of European influence and Edward Said’s Orientalism and refocuses our attention on the representations of the ‘West’ and ‘Western’ women in the Egyptian novel. The politics and poetics of the representations of the ‘West’ in the Egyptian novel, Occidentalism, do not mirror Orientalism, but are nuanced Egyptian responses to cultural encounters in the long 20th century. * Wen-chin Ouyang, Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature, SOAS, University of London, UK *
ISBN: 9780755646272
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
176 pages