Arabic Literature and the Nobel Prize

Abstract

By ROGER ALLEN For many centuries the Arabs have constituted for the Western world an alien and often confrontational entity, a quintessential other. The posture can be traced back at least to the Crusades, and as we know to our cost from current conflicts in Ireland, Lebanon, and the Gulf, wars based on religious belief are particularly capable of engendering misinformation and misunderstandings of prolonged duration. In spite of recent developments in what is known both about the Arab world and also about the processes by which that knowledge is interpreted, many Western attitudes of considerable antiquity still persist. The was so designated by the Western imperialist interests of previous generations (to which the Middle East was middle), and the inhabitants of the region seem to have been condemned by their very proximity to Europe, and therefrom by the frequency of military confrontations with the European political powers throughout the ages, to be the subject of a wide variety of religious and cultural polemics. By contrast, the nations of what was simultaneously designated as the Far were a more remote and exotic entity, something which, within a less directly confrontational context, seems to have promoted among Western scholars (perhaps automatically) a closer attention to the literary production of the region. More recently, events such as the series of conflicts following 'the foundation of the State of Israel and the emergence of a newly invigorated fundamentalist Islam have given the Western nations their share of anxiety and often annoyance. However, rather than being seen as offering opportunities for a renewed interest in the history and nature of Arabo-Islamic culture, these contemporary confrontations and conflicts have tended to cement still further attitudes which lead to a widespread unfamiliarity with this elaborate complex of nations and peoples and a concomitant reluctance to change the situation.