Modernist Arabic literature and the clash of civilizations discourse

Abstract

The paper explores the incorporation of western and Christian traditions, assimilated from western culture and literature in contemporary texts, written by Muslim/Arab poets and addressed to predominantly Muslim communities, in order to disrupt the clash of civilizations narrative and underline the attempt of post WWII Arab poets, led by Badr Shaker Al-Sayyab, to be engaged into transcultural dialogues with western masters particularly T.S Eliot. The paper argues that Arab poets, from ex-colonized countries, attempted to build bridges with the West by construction of a poetics that takes as its core the cultural/religious traditions of the European colonizers. Unlike writers from the ex-colonies, in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the West Indies who reconstruct western texts in order to subvert them, post WWII Arab poets integrated the religious heritage of what is traditionally categorized as an alien/hostile civilization into the Arab-Islamic literary canon.