Fluctuating Genres and the Emergence of New Voices from Within: The Uncanny of the Voyage through Time in Some Egyptian Narratives

Abstract

Abstract The Cultural Nahḍah age (Arab Renaissance) has represented, throughout the Arab world, the speculative axis on which to reflect on cultural modernity, inaugurating a process that, in some ways, is still ongoing. From a purely literary point of view, it has been characterized by the progress of new and increasingly varied genres. This article focuses on two works by Naǧīb Maḥfūẓ (1911–2006) and Muṣṭafà Maḥmūd (1921–2009). Both the writers use the narrative device of the voyage in Time that reveals the original commingling of realistic observations and dreamlike fantasies. In this way, the reader is encouraged to meditate on the presence of two principles that exist within modern Arabic literature: the hybrid character that fluctuates among more or less canonised genres, and the marginal nature of some works that were relegated to the margins by the academic environment. Neither represent limits, but rather supplementary qualities whose specificity in relation to the Arab world deserve to be investigated.