Reception: Stream of Consciousness

Abstract

The chapter deals with the process of reception of Western authors in Arabic literature as a process of indirect interference—that is, their writings were not accessed directly by agents of Arabic literature but by intermediaries, especially by translators. The case of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe is highly instructive in this respect, as its translation into Arabic in the nineteenth century was one of the factors that helped to shape the norms of the emerging Arabic novel. It was then that such European literary models as the novel and the short story were “imported” into Arabic literature, although one can hardly agree that it was only import that brought about the rise of Arabic fiction. There is surprisingly limited research on the contemporary Arab literary scene as to Western borrowings or interference. “Stream of consciousness” is a salient example—it is clearly present in Arabic literature by the 1960s, but no one has so far followed its trajectory from West to East. In this chapter, I discuss the reception of Virginia Woolf in Arabic literature, which later opened the way for Arab authors to write original fiction in her spirit.