Literature and Nation-Building in Nineteenth-Century Egypt

Abstract

In this chapter, I examine how the literature produced in nineteenth-century Egypt played an important role in the nation-building processes at both the Ottoman center and its periphery reflecting the social and political changes taking place and also helping to develop new forms of solidarity and models of community. This discussion will provide a context for Taymur’s study of the relationship between literature, gender and nation-building within which the analysis of ‵A’isha Taymur’s work of fiction titled Nata’ij al-Ahwal fi al-Aqwal wa al-Af‵al (The Consequences of Change in Words and Deeds), published in 1887/881 will be offered in the next chapter. As part of the analysis of nation-building, I will pay special attention to the way language, translation, and the changes in the old literary forms and themes offered prisms for capturing the homogenizing dynamic in the construction of a modern national community in Egypt and its relations with the Ottoman and European ones. Equally important, I will show that this dynamic privileged the narrative structures, new thresholds of meaning, and prescriptive models of community of a new emerging middle class. The result was the development of horizontal and fraternal bonds of community that gave the emerging middle class an important role to play in the shaping of these communities.