أدب، تاريخ، وتأريخ الأدب

Reuven Snir 's article "Literature, history, and the history of literature" deals with the methods and theoretical frameworks employed in the study of moderm Arabic literature, through an examination of two books published recently. The first, Modern Arabic Literature edited by M. M. Badawi (Cambridge: Cambridge Univresity Press, 1922), the fourth in the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, contains contributions by scholars to various aspects of Modern Arabic literature from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. The second book, A Short Histoy of Modern Arabic Literature by M. M. Badawi (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), is an attempt to provide a brief survey of the development of the whole of modern Arabic literature. Snir indecates that neither book provides a proper framework for the systematic study of Arabic text production and literary phenomena, both synchronically and diachronically. The books are based on the traditional concept which considers literature as subject to historical events, without referring to the major general theoretical achievements of historical poetics, espacially those of Formalism. In addition, both of them deal almost exclusively with the highbrow literary works accepted as ligitimate by dominant circles, while generally neglecting non-canonized texts, that is, popular literary works which are rejected by the dominant circles as illegitimate, and so do not win the attention of the literary establishment and scholars.