The Evolution of Comparative Literature in the Universities of the Arab World

Abstract

During the Arab literary movement and by the beginning of the Arab world's interactions with Europe in the early nineteenth century, comparative literature gradually spread to the Arab countries. Since then, comparative literature in the Arab world has faced ups and downs and has gone through various stages of development, and there have been many efforts in this respect, especially, in Arab universities as centres for its development. The emergence, development and different stages the comparative literature has gone through in the Arab world are topics that need investigation, and the present paper deals with this history. For this purpose, the paper focuses on universities and the relevant academic researches on this discipline until the end of the twentieth century through a historical analytical lens. The results show that although by the end of the twentieth century comparative literature in the Arab world has significantly evolved as a result of its development, growth and dissemination, compared to the Western world, it has only put behind its embryonic stage and the research still face many difficulties. Therefore, in general and even in comparison with other literary studies, comparative literature has not reached the status it deserves.

Keywords

• comparative literature
• arab universities
• the arab world
• twentieth century
• literary transformation