Conscience of the Nation: Writers, State, and Society in Modern Egypt

by Richard Jacquemond

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Artfully combining social and literary history, this unique study explores the dual loyalties of contemporary Egyptian authors from the 1952 Revolution to the present day. Egypt's writers have long had an elevated idea of their social mission, considering themselves 'the conscience of the nation.' At the same time, modern Egyptian writers work under the liberal conception of the writer borrowed from the European model. As a result, each Egyptian writer treads the tightrope between authority show more and freedom, social commitment and artistic license, loyalty to the state and to personal expression, in an ongoing quest for an elusive literary ideal. With these fundamentals in mind, Conscience of the Nation examines Egyptian literary production over the past fifty years, surveying works by established writers, as well as those of dozens of other authors who are celebrated in Egypt but whose writings are largely unknown to the foreign reader. Novelists and poets, scriptwriters and playwrights, critics and journalists--all have battled with and tried to resolve the tensions inherent in the conflicting forces of self and society. show less

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Richard Jacquemond
1+ Work 4 Members
Richard Jacquemond is associate professor of modern Arabic language and literature at the University of Provence and a researcher at IREMAM (Aix-en-Provence).

Classifications

Genres
Literature Studies and Criticism, Fiction and Literature
DDC/MDS
809 — Literature & rhetoric Literature, rhetoric & criticism History, description, critical appraisal of more than two literatures
LCC
PJ8208 .J3313 — Language and Literature Oriental languages and literatures Oriental philology and literature Arabic Arabic literature
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Languages
English
Media
Paper
ISBNs
1