Description as a Fiction-Writing Mode Between Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield and Naguib Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Comparative literature expounds on the areas of convergence in literature and reproduces the cultural similarities between East and West, demonstrating its results in guiding literary and intellectual renewal movements. Arabic literature takes advantage of the works of literature of other nations and is always keen to develop and enrich its awareness and culture. As the novel is a celebrated genre used in the comparative literature area, the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, well-known as the Dickens of Egypt, is one of the key poles of the international Arab novel. Mahfouz's novels and short stories convey Cairo, the capital of Egypt, its neighborhoods, inhabitants, and groceries to the home of every reader. The images and representations of Cairo drawn by Mahfouz are compared to the masters of English literature, namely Charles Dickens who significantly impacted Mahfouz's writings, especially his great love for describing and depicting everything his eyes see. With appropriating a comparative study of Dickens’s and Mahfouz’s selected works, this paper examines the concept of “description as a fiction-writing mode” as reflected in two literary works—Dickens’s David Copperfield (1850) and Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley (1947) following the School of Comparative Literature based on the principle of similarity in its study and analysis of literary works.