Cairo Trilogy Research Articles

Assessing English Translation of Historical Intertextuality in Maḥfūẓ's Cairo Trilogy

By skillfully integrating a wide range of scholarly and intercultural references into his novels, the Egyptian novelist Najīb Maḥfūẓ has differentiated himself as an author of exceptional prowess. To convey his intended meanings, he has made extensive use of historical allusions, including (past figures and events). In the present study, we attempt to assess the translation of these types of intertextuality utilized in Maḥfūẓ's Cairo trilogy via adopting the criteria of "accuracy, clarity and naturalness" proposed by Larson in 1984. This study follows a qualitative descriptive approach to analysis. We aim to discover the tactics utilized in translating historical intertextuality into English and to identify the challenges faced by the subject translators and the reasons behind them. The current study hypothesizes that irrespective of what method the translators use to translate historical intertextuality, the translator's historical and cultural background would seriously influence the output of the translation process. The study concludes that intertextuality is a crucial device for all language users since no speech ever starts in a vacuum, and it is via intertextuality that our old legacy is continually refreshed and viewed from different points of view. It further concludes that intertextual expressions that are more culturally specific are the most challenging and he translator's familiarity with the previous texts of SL plays a significant role in the process of deciphering the meaning of intertextual texts.

Representations of Egyptian Women in Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy: A Corpus-Based Appraisal Approach

Representations of Egyptian Women in Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy: A Corpus-Based Appraisal Approach

Amīna and the Breaking of the Secular Silence: Revisiting The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz

ABSTRACT Following critiques of secularism, feminist theory and literary analysis, this article revisits the much interpreted yet never exhausted Arabic masterpiece, the Cairo Trilogy (1956–1957), by Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006). The Cairo Trilogy depicts the lives of the middle-class ʿAbd al-Jawād family in colonial Cairo during the interwar period amidst the process of modernization and national uprising against British colonial domination. Scholars have considered the relations in the Jawādī family through a patriarchal lens via the perspective of the son Kamāl, the protagonist who represents the secular Arab intellectual. This study, instead, follows Amīna, the mother of the family, and her relationship to her two sons, Kamāl and Fahmy, to explore the different options and various relations between the religious and the secular in this colonial context. By reading the Jawādī family this way, this article uncovers the orientalist-secular construction of religion and religious ways of resistance despite colonial disruptions.

Critical Readings in Najeeb Mahfouz’s The Cairo Trilogy: A Masterpiece of Arabic Literature

This research article explores the literary masterpiece of Egyptian author Najeeb Mahfouz, with a special focus on his renowned Cairo Trilogy. The aims of the research are to examine the artistic merits and cultural significance of Mahfouz's work within the realm of English literature. The objectives include analyzing the thematic elements, character development, and narrative structure employed by Mahfouz in the Cairo Trilogy. To achieve these aims and objectives, a comprehensive analysis of Mahfouz's trilogy was conducted, incorporating literary criticism, historical context, and textual analysis. Primary and secondary sources were consulted to gather relevant information and insights. The results of the research reveal the remarkable depth and richness of Mahfouz's writing, demonstrating his mastery of storytelling and his ability to capture the social, political, and cultural complexities of the 20th-century Egypt. The thematic exploration of love, family, tradition, and societal change resonates strongly with readers across cultures and time periods. In conclusion, Najeeb Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy stands as an exceptional work of Arabic literature, blending captivating storytelling with profound insights into human nature and the challenges of societal transformation. The analysis of this masterpiece contributes to a deeper understanding of Mahfouz's impact as a literary figure and highlights the enduring relevance of his literature in the global literary canon.

Translation Assessment of Qur'anic & Prophetic Intertextuality with Reference to Maḥfūẓ's Cairo Trilogy

Translation Assessment of Qur'anic & Prophetic Intertextuality with Reference to Maḥfūẓ's Cairo Trilogy

Заглавия романов «Каирской трилогии» (1956–1957) Нагиба Махфуза как интерпретационный материал

The article studies the novels of The Cairo Trilogy written by the famous Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006, Nobel prize 1988), which is considered one of the greatest literary works of the 20th century and the prime work by the author. The titles of the books Bayn al-Qasrayn, Qasr ash-Shawq, and as-Sukkariyya, which literary mean ‘Between two palaces’, ‘Palace of desire’, and ‘Sugar street’, are taken from the names of actual streets situated in the old quarters of Cairo. The novels follow the life of a Cairene family ‘Abd al-Gawwad living in a historic Cairo district; the titles point at the streets where the family’s houses are located. The principle of entitling the books may seem simple – by location. Regarding titles as a special type of texts, sometimes called frame texts, the article examines the following questions: is it true that the titles of the novels do not point at anything except geography? Do the texts meet the reader’s expectations created by the titles? The article concludes that the locations named in the titles not only highlight the national character of the novels but also prioritize the space of the family’s universe that survives a massive transformation during the first half of the 20th century. The novels show how the social changes ruin all the hierarchical family relations. The first title conveys the idea that the ‘Abd al-Gawwads ‘hang between’ two historic periods; the subsequent books show that the family does not cope very well, and there reigns corruption, illness, and lack of morality. From this point of view, on the one hand, the titles fulfil the reader’s expectations because the characters are shown to prefer ‘forbidden desire’ and alcohol to family life and honest business; on the other hand, there is a contradiction with the expectations created by the third title as this lifestyle does not bring any ‘sugar’ to their lives.

Appearance versus reality: A psychoanalytic Jungian reading of Naguib Mahfouz’s Trilogy

This study examines Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy from a psychoanalytic perspective, focusing on the character of every human being as a combination of consciousness and unconsciousness. The study uses Carl Jung’s Theory of Self-individuation to provide a detailed analysis of the novel. The character of Sayid Ahmed, the protagonist, is examined through the Persona archetype and the Shadow archetype. The Persona archetype is examined in relation to Sayid’s relationship with his family and the outer community, while the Shadow archetype is examined in relation to his private life with dancers, prostitutes, and a group of playful friends. The study is drawn to the binary in the protagonist’s character due to his ability to maintain integrity while leading a dissolute life in reality. The study aims to underscore that the character of every human being is a combination of consciousness and unconsciousness, with “Appearance” and “Reality” as inseparable sides.

The Egyptian Novelistic Prose of the 1950s and the Tendencies of its Development: a Comparative Analysis

The article investigates the common tendencies and the diversity of the Egyptian novelistic prose of the 1950s. We analyzed the following novels: The Earth (1954) by ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sharqawi, The Cairo Trilogy (1956–1957) by Naguib Mahfouz, The Sin (1959) by Yusuf Idris, The Open Door (1960) by Latifa al-Zayyat, and The Blue Flashlights (1960) by Mahmoud Teymour. Despite the fact that some of the most significant novels were written in the 1950s (The Trilogy, The Sin, and The Open Door are in the top-100 of the Arabic novels of the 20th century, Arab writers union, 2001), the researchers have been taking into account either the authors one by one, or the modern Arabic literature in general. We drew the attention to the national features and the close context in which these influential Egyptian novels were created. By comparing their plots, characters’ systems, style and language, narrative, and the conflicts of the pieces, we came to the following results: the realism in Egypt flourished in the 1950s; the socialist, critical, psychological branches of the realistic literature are represented. The writers’ interest was dedicated to the national liberation struggle. The prose of the decade is either urban or rustic. The difference between writers’ generation appears in the language of the dialogues (Standard Arabic or Egyptian dialect). In conclusion, the realism in Egypt had reached its mature stage in the 1950s, and during the decade, the tendencies appeared that had led to the rise of modernism in the 1960s.

The architectural features of socio-spatial transformation in Hassan Al-Imam’s Cairo Trilogy

The urban scenery that dominated Cairo since the nineteenth century was a spatial superimposition of tradition and modernity, represented in the social and architectural composition of the city. The cinematic medium in Egypt attempted to visualize such overlap through a vivid depiction of spatial transformations occurring within the micro and macro urban levels revealing hidden aspects of social order and organizational behaviour. This article sheds light on Egyptian filmmaker Hassan Al-Imam’s Cairo Trilogy films, based on the critically acclaimed novels by Nobel Prize laureate Naguib Mahfouz, where the story takes place in the heart of early twentieth-century Cairo spanning from 1917 to 1944. The films’ physical features illustrate the morphology of time and urban space constituting to the socio-spatial narratives of the local setting, a theoretical framework adopted by the authors named cine-spatial representation. Through the examination of such connection within the settings across the three films, the article reveals the influence of non-physical elements on the physicality of architectural and urban space, creating a visual narrative from social collectivism to individualist fragmentation.

Constructions of Masculinity in the Middle East and North Africa: Literature, Film, and National Discourse

Constructions of Masculinity in the Middle East and North Africa: Literature, Film, and National Discourse

The Cairo Trilogy from the Perspective of Orientalism

Before the 1980s, the meaning of Orientalism was single, that is only to carry out research in various fields related to Oriental civilization, and to excavate, narrate and write knowledge. Orientalism written by the Arab-American scholar Edward W. Said, is one of the representative works of colonial cultural theory that emerged after the 1990s. <i>The Cairo Trilogy</i> (<i>Palace Walk</i>, <i>Palace of Desire</i>, <i>Sugar Street</i>), written by Egyptian Realist writer Naguib Mahfouz in series, published in 1956 and 1957. The story which focused on national identity in the novel takes place in three old neighborhoods in Cairo, Egypt, so this novel is also known as <i>The Cairo Trilogy</i>. Unlike other diaspora writers, Mahfouz did not have multiple nationalities and never left the land he grew up in, but was caught up in the tumultuous times of modern Egypt and experienced the violent clash of Eastern and Western ideologies and cultures. His Cairo Trilogy not only provides a visual representation of Islamic-Arab culture, but also conveys the attitudes and perceptions of the 'other' and his adherence to the local culture through his characters. Focus on the main idea from <i>The Cairo Trilogy,</i> this article will attempt to briefly explain the literary value and significance of the Cairo Trilogy from the perspective of Said's Orientalism.

A Sociopragmatic Analysis of Women and Gender Roles in John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga and Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy

This study is concerned with investigating the treatment of women and gender roles in Glasworthy&amp;rsquo;s Forsyte Saga and Naguib Mahfouz&amp;rsquo;s Cairo Trilogy from a sociopragmatic perspective. The texts studied for this paper have not been evaluated to socio-pragmatic analysis that reflects the little application of this approach to literary works. As thus, the goal of this paper is to advance sociopragmatic analysis to these novels&amp;mdash;there is salience from the style, narrative techniques, and language utilized by both writers in their books, which indeed points to pragmatic undercurrents that must be explored. The results indicate that social and political aspects are key elements for understanding women and gender issues in the selected texts. The integration of these contextual elements revealed how the two authors manipulated literary discourse to reflect on the power relations and struggles between men and women of their age. It can be claimed that sociopragmatic approaches provide opportunities for understanding the hidden layers within the selected texts in terms of social practices and interactions among characters. It is finally suggested that sociopragmatic approaches should be integrated into literary studies for a better and deeper understanding of literary discourse in general and crosscultural issues in particular.

The Cairo Trilogy: An Existential Reading in Three Generations of this Novel

The researcher in this paper elaborates the writings of Naguib Mahfouz from an existential perspective in Cairo Trilogy. Mahfouz concludes that western scholars and politicians conceal the realities of daily life in Egypt, which Mahfouz reveals. In Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, one can find an openness and acceptance in Egyptian society for other faiths and cultures. The researcher will illustrate how there is an important acceptance of internal existential and religious struggles amongst individuals in the society during this novel. The researcher focuses on the character and the inner psychological conflicts in these characters. It seems that this is an important aspect of Egyptian identity. The idea that Egyptians or Muslims are struggling mainly with the West is contradictory to Mahfouz’s characterizations. He asserts that Egyptians have their own internal struggles because of the diversity of their ideologies.

Naguib MahfouzThe Quarter by Roger Allen

Books in Review Kébir Ammi 99 Ben Aïcha Johannes Anyuru 82 They Will Drown in Their Mothers’ Tears Elisabeth Åsbrink 78 Made in Sweden: 25 Ideas That Created a Country Bandi 90 The Red Years: Forbidden Poems from Inside North Korea Kyce Bello 87 Refugia Yonatan Berg 96 Frayed Light Maaz Bin Bilaal 97 Ghazalnama: Poems from Delhi, Belfast, and Urdu Nathan Brown 83 100 Years Reja-e Busailah 106 Poems of a Palestinian Boyhood Emmanuel Carrère 77 97,196 Words Pierre Chappuis 104 A Notebook of Clouds Sergio Chejfec 102 The Incompletes Nicholas A. Christakis 108 Blueprint:The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society Haydar Ergülen 107 Pomegranate Garden Marion Fayolle 90 The Tenderness of Stones Paulina Flores 83 Humiliation Rodrigo Fresán 81 The Dreamed Part Petina Gappah 92 Out of Darkness, Shining Light Keum Suk Gendry-Kim 93 Grass Azita Ghahreman 95 Negative of a Group Photograph Dana Gioia 98 The Catholic Writer Today Berit Glanz 110 Pixeltänzer Heddi Goodrich 109 Lost in the Spanish Quarter Isabella Hammad 110 The Parisian Michel Houellebecq 78 Serotonin Christy Lefteri 104 The Beekeeper of Aleppo Li Er 94 Ying Wu Xiong Cixin Liu 88 Supernova Era António Lobo Antunes 86 Until Stones Become Lighter Than Water Naguib Mahfouz 74 The Quarter Rodrigo Márquez Tizano 84 Jakarta Dorota Masłowska 105 Honey, I Killed the Cats Khaled Mattawa 91 Mare Nostrum Robert Menasse 87 The Capital Juan José Millás 106 From the Shadows Patrick Modiano 77 Encre sympathique Palestine +100: Stories 91 from a Century after the Nakba Salman Rushdie 75 Quichotte Isha Sesay 80 Beneath the Tamarind Tree: A Story of Courage, Family, and the Lost Schoolgirls of Boko Haram Elif Shafak 76 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World Shapes of Native 100 Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers Susan de Sola 103 Frozen Charlotte: Poems Burhan Sönmez 100 Labyrinth John Taylor 104 A Notebook of Ridges Wang Anyi 85 Fu Ping Kaaron Warren 84 Into Bones Like Oil Audrée Wilhelmy 96 The Body of the Beasts Gabriela Ybarra 102 The Dinner Guest Salman Rushdie’s firecracker of a novel Isha Sesay on the resilience of sisterhood Khaled Mattawa’s poetry of harrow and heartbreak Petina Gappah shines a light on empire’s darkness 75 80 91 92 WORLDLIT.ORG 73 Books in Review FEATURED REVIEW Naguib Mahfouz The Quarter Trans. Roger Allen. London. Saqi Books. 2019. 87 pages. WHEN EGYPTIAN CRITIC and noted journalist Mohamed Shoair uncovered a collection of never-before-seen stories by Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, he labeled the discovery a “literary treasure trove.” And while history has shown that manuscripts discovered after a writer’s death should be treated with a healthy amount of skepticism, The Quarter appears to be an exceptional case. Shoair uncovered the texts during a visit to Mahfouz’s family home. The writer’s daughter, Umm Kulthum, pulled out a small cardboard box that contained novel drafts and outlines, notebooks filled with political observations, contracts, and a collection of forty stories with a note that read, “Published stories written in 1993–94.” After carefully reading through the stories, however , Shoair realized that eighteen of them had not been published before and encouraged Mahfouz’s daughter to bring the stories to light. Though it is not clear why the eighteen stories were not published along with the other twenty-two, it is possible that they were forgotten during a turbulent period in Mahfouz’s life. In 1994 the then-eighty-twoyear -old novelist was stabbed in the neck by an extremist outside his Cairo home. While he survived the attack, he was permanently affected by nerve damage to his right arm. Now, twenty-five years following the assassination attempt, the collection of eighteen short stories has finally seen the light of day under the title The Quarter. Those expecting the profound realism of The Cairo Trilogy or the richly descriptive world of Midaq Alley will undoubtedly be surprised by the stories embedded in this charmingbook.TheQuarterisacollectionof interconnected, Sufi-inspired fiction—a fantastic example of the experimentalism that characterized the twilight portion of Mahfouz’s career. Instead of focusing on historical...

Analytical Study: The Existential Predicament Perspective in Naguib Mahfouz’s Selected Novels

This paper aims at analyzing the selected novels of Naguib Mahfouz in the light of the existential predicament of ‘man’. Such predicament is manifested in the aspects of despair, frustration, and poverty. The Characters in the novels play a significant role in displaying the sordid images of the modern futility of the conditions of the post-World War in Egypt. The paper assumes the existentialism as a theory and topic to comment on the situation, hence the researcher conducts the research within the existentialist theory. The texts that are selected in this paper are as follow, Midaq Alley, Cairo Trilogy, The Beggar, and The Thief and the Dogs.

Theme of Oppression of Women in Naguib Mahfouz's Realistic Novels: An Analytical Study

It is in his realistic novels that Mahfouz unequivocally voices his views on violence against women, views to which he remains loyal till the end of his life. The main objective is to deal with the theme of oppression of women in selected novels that Mahfouz wrote in the 1940s and early 1950s. The significance of the study lies in its attempt to link the past with the present. The study tries to show how Mahfouz's realistic novels are contemporary and relevant because they deal with issues that are contemporary and relevant. The researcher used the analytical method to achieve this aim. Several female characters from New Cairo, Beginning and End, Middaq Alley, and the Cairo Trilogy are selected as examples of women who are subjected to exploitation and oppression. These women stand for the submissive wife, the self-sacrificing woman, the ambitious woman, and the new woman. The study is divided into sections based on this classification in order to fully understand the various types of oppression faced by women in a Middle-eastern society. The stories of these women are examined and analysed in light of the socio-political conditions at the time and Mahfouz's views on women and their place in society. The conclusion is in the form of a list of the important lessons we learn from Mahfouz's treatment of the theme of oppression of women. It is through these findings that the study links the past with the present.

Mulk Raj Anand's Punjab Trilogy and Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy: A Comparative Study

Writing about Mulk Raj Anand, Indian writer, and Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian writer, is writing about two of the great writers who played major roles in developing the novel in their own countries.They succeeded in using novel to deal with the historical development in their respective societies. This study examines two of their best-known works Punjab Trilogy and Cairo trilogy. This paper investigates the way Anand and Mahfouz accomplish their construction of private and public lives and how they try to show a large picture of the society through the private lives of their characters. The significance of the study lies in comparing two great writers of two great nations that underwent similar historical development in the first half of the 20th century.

Re-Reading the Arab Darwin: The Lewis Affair and Naguib Mahfouz’s Palace of Desire

Re-Reading the Arab Darwin: The Lewis Affair and Naguib Mahfouz’s Palace of Desire Michael Allan (bio) On July 19, 1882, a professor of chemistry and geology, Dr. Edwin Lewis, cited the work of Charles Darwin in a commencement address to the graduating class of medical students at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut. His reference was part of a talk entitled al-Ma‘rifah wa-l-‘ilm wa-l-ḥikmah (Knowledge, Science, and Wisdom) and centered more broadly on modern science and its relation to knowledge than on any lengthy exploration of Darwin’s theories.1 Nonetheless, in the years to come, this brief allusion ignited an intense series of debates that played out in academic journals, the popular press, and scholarly circles across the Arab world. In most of these discussions what was at stake was not merely Darwin’s propositions regarding the origin of man, but key epistemological assumptions about the boundaries of human reason and the explanatory force of empirical science. For Lewis, Darwin’s theories were important to an argument for the pursuit of scientific knowledge and, in his estimation, especially well suited to the graduating class. For the director of the College and others in the audience, the speech was heard as wholly inappropriate. The ensuing controversy sparked what would come to be known as the Lewis Affair and threatened to dissolve the Syrian Protestant College entirely. Darwin’s resonance was by no means limited to the Syrian Protestant College. In 1957, when the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz published the second volume of his Cairo Trilogy, Qasr al-shawq (Palace of Desire), he devoted a chapter to a discussion of Darwin.2 The Trilogy, overall, becomes the site in [End Page 319] which a number of critical philosophical and historical issues are folded into the imagined world of a middle-class Cairene family, whose conflicts, tensions, and triumphs constitute the drama that animates the three volumes of this now canonical piece of modern Arabic prose. Collectively the volumes trace the story of a family patriarch, Sayyid Ahmad ‘Abd al-Jawad, his wife, Amina, his daughters Khadija and ‘A’isha, and his three sons, Yasin, Fahmy, and Kamal.3 This robust narrative spans a period from 1917–44, gesturing throughout to a number of subplots based roughly around three generations of national history: the first, the Wafdist generation of 1919, the second, a transition between the wars, and the third, marked by tensions between socialism and Muslim activism.4 In its comprehensive span of material, the Trilogy serves as a cornerstone of modern Arabic literature: as Hilary Kilpatrick claims, “In its length and the scale of its conception the ‘Trilogy’ far surpasses any previous Egyptian novel; indeed, in its own genre it has remrained unequalled.”5 Although a seemingly minimal incident in the context of Mahfouz’s lengthy novel, the discussion of Darwin not only crystallizes a number of issues in the family—regarding religion, authority, and the role of education—but it also stages a problem of reading at the heart of this realist text. In this particular chapter, the youngest son, Kamal, publishes an article on the work of Darwin and is summoned for a discussion with his parents. For his father, al-Sayyid Ahmad, the matter is one of reprimanding his son and cautioning him against the pursuit of such atheistic thoughts, and for his mother, Amina, the matter is one of asserting the fundamental truth of the Qur’an, a model of scholarship consistent with the grandfather’s pursuits. In the contours of the discussion, the reader is offered both an account of what is said between family members and the terms in which they variously hear and understand one another. As a novel (as against a philosophical argument), the intricacies of the passage frame the issue less as a matter of right and wrong than as the grounds upon which right and wrong are felt. The chapter adeptly animates conflicts at play between one mode of judgment and another. With its careful construction of characters and sentiment, Mahfouz’s chapter appears to offer us what the historical material on the Lewis Affair does not. Whereas the Lewis Affair...

Mulk Raj Anand's Punjab Trilogy and Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy: A Comparative Study

Writing about Mulk Raj Anand, Indian writer, and Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian writer, is writing about two of the great writers who played major roles in developing the novel in their own countries. They succeeded in using novel to deal with the historical development in their respective societies. This study examines two of their best-known works Punjab Trilogy and Cairo trilogy . This paper investigates the way Anand and Mahfouz accomplish their construction of private and public lives and how they try to show a large picture of the society through the private lives of their characters. The significance of the study lies in comparing two great writers of two great nations that underwent similar historical development in the first half of the 20 th century. Keywords: Comparative study, Egypt, history, India, Trilogy

The Age of the Efendiyya: Passages to Modernity in National-Colonial Egypt

The Age of the Efendiyya: Passages to Modernity in National-Colonial Egypt