The Development of Literary Vision from Tradition to Modernity in Modern Arab Thought

Abstract

The literary vision within modern Arab thought evolved from a conformist conception dominated by inherited tradition and adherence to established canonical forms to a modernist perspective shaped by engagement with the Western Other in the context of the nineteenth-century Nahda. These transformations emerged as part of a broader effort to reconsider the concepts of literature, its genres, and its functions. Calls for the exercise of reason in critically reexamining the heritage became increasingly prominent, and literature came to be regarded as a medium for articulating human and social concerns, as well as historical transformations. It also assumed the role of raising questions and engaging debates surrounding issues of freedom and identity. Literary discourse was thus emancipated from fixed rhetorical structures and reconstituted as a creative act actively participating in the shaping of a present open to the transformations of the age.