City as an Art Space in Modern Arabic Prose

Abstract

To study the stated topic, we considered it appropriate to draw on the textual material of two works of modern Arabic-language literature in the genre of the novel, written by masters of
the word, well-known not only to the reading audience of the Arab countries, but also foreign ones. These are “Frankenstein in Baghdad” (2013) by Iraqi writer ’Ahmad Sa‘adawi and “Incredible novel. Damascus Mosaic” (1997) by the Syrian-Lebanese writer Gada as-Samman. The text of “Frankenstein…” will be studied most fully, the other novel — in part. Exploring
the question of how artistic space is depicted in modern Arabic-language prose, the authors of the article point out that the theme of space and time has not gone out of sight of scientists and thinkers for more than one hundred years. Representatives of various sciences, including philologists, show interest in it. The contribution to the development of this topic by M. M. Bakhtin, Yu. M. Lotman and others. Attention is drawn to a large arsenal of terms and concepts used by philologists in its study. The novel by ’Ahmad Sa‘adawi, who became the winner of the “Arab Booker” in 2014, the authors made the subject of particularly close attention. The artistic space in it is depicted most voluminously — in its toponymic, color, acoustic, odor characteristics, which allows the reader to create a visible image of the environment where the characters live and act, as well as get an idea of the situation not only in the described locus — Baghdad, but also in the country as a whole, and at a critical period in its history. The textual material of the novel G. as-Samman considered from the point of view of the locus-character correlation, deepens and clarifies the reader’s and philological understanding of the artistic space. It is concluded that modern Arabic writers pay considerable attention to the image of artistic space, use its various references, due to which this image appears capacious and realistic. This achieves the goal of the masters of the artistic word — to convey the truth about their country and its people, to draw attention to the tragedy of their current situation.

Keywords:

space, locus, topos, house, Baghdad, place names, Iraqi novel