Slika religije u savremenom arapskom romanu / The Image of Religion in the Contemporary Arabic Novel

Abstract

This paper analyses the narrative representations of religious agents in the contemporary Arabic novel. Contextualizing the domain of the religious in its fragile ideological age, or within the dominant secular matrix, the paper locates the established religious topoi in the contemporary novel as an effective cultural narrative. Within the framework of literary criticism and theoretical models, the paper offers the interpretation of the genesis of fixation, otherness and stereotypes in the images of religious characters. Central analysis is devoted to the novels of Taha Hussein and Naguib Mahfouz, which are considered the best representatives of literary narratives in the period between the 1930s and 1990s. The paper discusses the monolithic representation of the religious, deconstructs secular stereotypes, and analyses the phenomenon of parallax and its social and cultural consequences within the aforementioned novelistic narratives.