Acculturation of ‘I’ from the other in the novel al-Ashjār wa Ightiyāl Mazrūq

Abstract

Modern Arabic literature reflects a long history of the Western colonization of the Muslim World and this colonization generally results either in the rejection or acceptance of the colonizing culture. Specifically concerning the acceptance, it is related to the merger of two different cultures of Islam and the West as being expressed in literary domain. This merged cultures expressed in literary domain culminate in the formation of a structured identity of individual or collective values called acculturation. Thus, this study intends to analyse the acculturation of Western knowledge and worldview in modern Arabic novels as portrayed in the novel ‘al-Ashjār wa Ightiyāl Mazrūq’ by Abd al-Rahman Munif. It is found that the novels portray the confrontation of the stagnant Arabs and the advanced West, and the writer charges the Arabs with the accountability for the stagnation as he touches on the absence of freedom in the Arab World while at the same time, he is obviously fascinated with the freedom and intellectualism the West enjoys. Clearly, this is kind of acculturation of the novels from ‘the other’.