Table Of ContentSELECTED STUDIES IN
MODERN ARABIC NARRATIVE:
HISTORY, GENRE, TRANSLATION
RESOURCES IN ARABIC
AND ISLAMIC STUDIES
series editors
Joseph E. Lowry
Devin J. Stewart
Shawkat M. Toorawa
international advisory board
Maaike van Berkel
Kristen Brustad
Antonella Ghersetti
Ruba Kana'an
Wen-chin Ouyang
Tahera Qutbuddin
Number 8
Selected Studies in Modern Arabic Narrative:
History, Genre, Translation
SELECTED STUDIES IN
MODERN ARABIC NARRATIVE:
HISTORY, GENRE, TRANSLATION
Roger Allen
Atlanta, Georgia
2019
SELECTED STUDIES IN
MODERN ARABIC NARRATIVE:
HISTORY, GENRE, TRANSLATION
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© 2019, Lockwood Press
ISBN: 978-1-937040-76-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019930407
Cover design by Susanne Wilhelm
Cover image: Letter from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Munīf to Roger Allen, dated 18th November, 2001
(Courtesy of Roger Allen)
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.
Contents
Series Editors’ Preface vii
1. Arabic Literature Studies: A Retrospect (2009) 1
2. The Development of Fictional Genres: The Novel and Short Story in Arabic
(1997) 13
3. Sindbad the Sailor and the Early Arabic Novel (2000) 27
4. The Novella in Arabic: A Study in Fictional Genres (1986) 35
5. The Arabic Short Story and the Status of Women (1995) 47
6. Arabic Fiction and the Quest for Freedom (1995) 63
7. Arabic Fiction’s Relationship with Its Past: Intertextuality and Retrospect
Post-1967 (2006) 77
8. The Impact of the Translated Text: the Case of Najīb Maḥfūẓ’s Novels, with
Special Emphasis on The Trilogy (1993) 87
9. Najīb Maḥfūẓ’s Awlād Ḥāratinā: A History and Interpretation (2011) 117
10. Autobiography and Memory: Maḥfūẓ’s Aṣdāʾ al-sīra al-dhātiyya (1998) 145
11. The Autobiography of Yūsuf Idrīs? (2002) 155
12. ʿUrs al-Zayn by al-Ṭayyib Ṣāliḥ: Tradition and Change (2001) 163
13. Historiography as Novel: BenSalim Himmich’s Al-ʿAllāma (2008) 171
14. Translation Translated: Rashīd Abū Jadra’s Maʿrakat al-Zuqāq (1997) 181
15. Fiction and Publics: The Emergence of the “Arabic Bestseller” (2009) 193
16. Translation and Culture: Theory and Practice (2004) 197
Bibliography of Articles by Roger Allen on Modern Arabic Narrative 205
Index of Proper Names 213
v
Series Editors’ Preface
No Western scholar has contributed as much to the study of modern Arabic narrative
as has Roger Allen. His doctoral dissertation was the very first Oxford D.Phil. in modern
Arabic literature, completed in 1968 under the supervision of Mustafa Badawi. That same
year, he took a position in Arabic language and literature at the University of Pennsyl-
vania.
Roger Allen has been phenomenally prolific since: fifty books and translations, and
two hundred articles, and counting, on Arabic language pedagogy, on translation, and
on Arabic literary history, criticism and literature. He is one of the most decorated and
acclaimed translators of Arabic literature. His most recent accolade is his selection as
translator of a collection of eighteen of Naguib Mahfouz’s “lost” stories.
This volume brings together sixteen of Roger Allen’s articles on modern Arabic nar-
rative—from 1986 to 2011—with a special focus on genre, on translation, and on literary
history, featuring analyses of the works of Rachid Boudjedra, Bensalem Himmich, Yusuf
Idris, Naguib Mahfouz, and Tayeb Salih. In reprinting the material, we have corrected
typos; made small changes or updates; included a bibliography of Roger Allen’s articles
on modern Arabic narrative; and supplied a simple index.
It is our distinct pleasure to include in this series a collection of articles by our very
own teacher.
We would like to thank Daniel Kaylor and Parvine Toorawa for typing up several
chapters, and to express our continuing gratitude to three friends with whom it is always
a pleasure to work: our cover designer Susanne Wilhelm, our publisher Billie Jean Collins,
and our distributor Ian Stevens.
Joseph E. Lowry
Devin J. Stewart
Shawkat M. Toorawa
vii
1
Arabic Literature Studies: A Retrospect (2008)
A couple of months ago (I’m writing this in the summer of 2008), some of my former stu-
dents, all of whom are now university professors in their own right, invited my wife and
myself to dinner. At dessert time I was surprised to receive a file which contained the de-
tails of the series of articles that will constitute my Festschrift, to appear in three journals
devoted to my chosen field, Arabic language and literature. That, coupled to the fact that
I am “rising sixty-seven” and have received a kind invitation from Professor John Burt
Foster, combine to constitute the occasion for the retrospect that follows.
While my topic is Arabic literature studies in general, I am often asked what is the
path (or are the paths) by which a student may embark upon a career in such a field.
Equally often I am asked about my memories of my own motivations in doing so. Let me
therefore begin by describing my beginnings in the field of Arabic studies in general, and
Arabic literature studies in particular. Born in England and raised and educated in the
beautiful English city of Bristol (far more significant historically than its neighbor, Bath,
which American tourists insist on visiting), I was admitted to Lincoln College, Oxford in
1961 to study Greek and Latin (the “classical languages” to the Western academic mind-
set). I had started Latin at the age of seven and Greek at twelve, and it only required about
one term at Oxford, as I recollect, to persuade me that I had had more than enough of
weekly prose and verse compositions, although the treasures of the literary traditions of
Greek and Latin continued to impress me, as they still do. I vividly remember informing
my tutor that I wished to change subject—not a complete impossibility at Oxford (where
admission standards in any European language and literature program are extremely
high), but certainly difficult and unusual. After expressing a certain diffidence at my
decision, he suggested that I talk to various professors in such areas as modern Greek,
Serbo-Croat (as it then was), Portuguese, and “the Oriental group” (as he termed it). Be-
ing a first-generation university student from the rural wilds of Bristol, I naively asked
what that “group” might involve. Hebrew, Arabic, and Chinese were all mentioned, but
then there was a whole string of other languages: Prakrit, Khotanese, Syriac, and so on.
Undaunted I did indeed pay a series of visits to tremendous “eminences” in their relative
fields, none of whom provided me with information that would allow me to eliminate
any single one from a prospective list. Thus, when I am now asked what motivated me to
begin Arabic, my only response is that firstly I did not wish to study Latin and Greek any
1
Description:No scholar has contributed as much to the study of Arabic narrative as Roger Allen, from his 1968 Oxford D. Phil thesis, "An annotated translation and study of the third edition of Hadith 'Isa ibn Hisham by Muhammad al-Muwaylihi," to his 2017 "Teaching the Maqamat in Translation." In the intervening
