Comparative Literature in the Arab World

Ever since the advent of Islam and its expansion throughout and beyond the Middle East, the Arabs have always been aware of comparative literature, but only to establish who counted as the most poetic or how one verse line measured up to or surpassed another; and that was due to the fact that the Arabic poetry was considered such a peerless phenomenon that even the thought of comparing it with other languages and literatures was out of the question. Comparative literature in its western sense, made its entry into the Arab world after the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in 1798. Comparative literary studies in the Arab World were put in motion as early as 1904 in Cairo with the publication of al-Khalidi’s book on comparative literature, entitled Tarikh ‘ilm al-adab ‘ind al-ifranj wal-‘arab wa-Victor Hugo (The History of the Discipline of Literature among Westerners and Arabs and Victor Hugo), which led to a flurry of activities and publications related to comparative literature. Nevertheless, it never became an academic discipline in Arab universities and was just accorded the status of a course at advanced undergraduate or/and graduate level in departments of literature because the professors of Arabic departments not only misunderstood Comparative Literature, but also considered it a threat to the specificity and autonomy of Arabic literature. Comparative literature is on the rise in the Arab World at the very moment when, in the metropolitan centers of the West, it seems to have gone through a crisis; the reason is that the focus of the discipline in the Arab World is no longer on the French theory of influences, as it used to be. Comparative Literature, with its inherent potentials, offers one the opportunity to go beyond national borders and witness the similarities of different national literatures without centralizing one or marginalizing the other. The rise of nationalism, pan Arabism, and also the problematization of methods and theories of formerly colonizing countries explain for the increasing attention paid to comparative literature in the Arab World today.