The Autobiography in Modern Arab Literature and Culture

Abstract

The autobiography is a quintessentially modern genre of expression. Only the worldview of modern man permits one to look at one's own life story, discovering in it the value of the uniquely individual experience, yet at the same time recognizing in it a meaning of a more general human dimension. The existence of massive autobiographical materials, especially in the traditional vita literature in Arabic, should not be confused with autobiography proper. The first autobiography proper in Arabic was written at the turn of the century. As a literary genre, it came into its own only in the 1930s and reached its first peak in the 1950s and early 1960s, although in some special categories, such as women's autobiographies, we find a lively, continued development. The authors who represent the first peak in autobiographical writing were all born in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. This was a generation keenly aware of the transitional character of the times, yet one with firm liberal beliefs in the constructive meaningfulness of the changes witnessed and the progressive evolution of humanity over time. Perhaps the political developments since the 1960s in the Middle East have shaken this liberal conviction of meaning, this belief in reason and development, and have therefore also made it more difficult to attribute meaning to the individual's