Comparative Literature in Arabic: History and Major Tendencies to the 1980s

The original article by Hussam Al-Khateeb does not include an abstract; however, due to our policy in Comparative Literature, we have added one. This paper has been chosen for translation for several reasons. 1) Hussam Al-Khateeb is a Syria-born comparatist and teaches at Qatar University, and has a comprehensive knowledge of comparative literature in the Arab world. 2) The conditions of comparative literature in the Arab world are very similar to those in Iran so we can benefit from their experiences. 3) This paper is written by an Arab scholar who has experienced these challenges closely and makes a scholarly and fair criticism. In general, the paper studies the emergence and development of comparative literature in the Arab world. For the first time, Egyptian comparatists seriously started to study comparative literature since 1980s. Most of Arab comparatists graduated from French universities and were naturally influenced by the French traditional school. The works of Guyard and Etiémble have been translated into Arabic several times. Mohamed Ghonemi Hilal is the only Egyptian comparatist who has had a long-lasting influence on comparative literature in the Arab world. Arab universities suffer from lack of experts in comparative literature. Many of instructors are not comparatists by academic training. According to Hussam Al-Khateeb, many of the papers and books written in Arabic do not have anything to do with comparative literature and just carry its title. Hilal also blames many of these works for their superficiality and lack of depth. To Hussam Al-Khateeb, many Arab researchers do not consider comparative literature more than a simple action of comparison. At the end Hussam Al-Khateeb refers to a trend developed by some Arab comparatists who have a better and deeper understanding of the new theories and methodology of comparative literature and hopes that they can successfully face the challenges of comparative literature in the Arab world as an independent academic discipline.