Impact of Classicism and Romanticism on Modern Arabic Literature

Abstract

Modern Arabic literature has been influenced by European literature more than the ancient Arabic literature, and it flourished after renewing its intellectual sources, just as the ancient Arabic literature flourished after contacting the literature of other nations, such as the ancient Greek and Latin literatures. In this article we use the comparative descriptive approach in this article, which is always suitable to study such topics. First, we shed light on the literary doctrines and their origins in the West, then we study the classicism and romanticism to know the extent of their influence in the modern Arabic literature, then we study the literary schools that appeared in the modern Arabic literature, and thus the emergence of features of renewal in the modern Arabic literature in the light of impact of those western literary doctrines. It is important for us to look carefully at how the literary doctrines originated among Westerners, to show to what extent the will of the writers and critics worked in the emergence of these doctrines, and to what extent the literature preceded it as a means of expressing psychological status or social conditions that change, so the literature changes and its doctrines change. These doctrines have flourished in Western literature since the European Renaissance at the classical stability, with the prevailing artistic and intellectual foundations in it. Importance of this topic is clear in terms of its profound influence in the modern Arabic literature, as the aspects of renewal cannot be understood accurately without studying it.