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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/71463
Description
Title
Pangs of Exile
Author(s)
Talhami, Soumaya Youssef
Issue Date
1982
Department of Study
Comparative and World Literature
Discipline
Comparative and World Literature
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Literature, Comparative
Abstract
The feeling of exile is a timeless and continuous element of the human condition. Understanding of this complex literary theme is to be arrived at, not through terminology and definitions, but through historical and ideological perspectives.
In French literature, the feeling of exile permeates the Judeo-Christian symbolism of the Renaissance. Montaigne's discovery of the self led to the Romantics' alienation from society and the world. Rousseau's attitude toward the city was transformed into deracinement in the work of Barres at the turn of the century. Malraux and the neohumanists saw metaphysical exile as a result of a malentendu between man and his universe. Camus felt that the fate of man is exile, solitude, and death.
Western influence has contributed to a similar feeling known as qalaq in modern Arabic fiction. Qalaq can be traced back to the nineteenth-century Arabic revival, when it was perceived as alienation from the culture. Qindil Um Hashem by Yahya Haqqi illustrates this form of alienation which results from the conflict between eastern and western values. With modernization and technological change, cultural alienation is found to be at the root of both the feeling of social estrangement and metaphysical exile. Mahfuz has illustrated many forms of alienation at the different stages of his writings.
The works of Camus and Mahfuz illustrate the timelessness and continuity of the feeling of exile and reveal the universal element in man's desire to change his world and his longing for a fate other than death.
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