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East-West Encounter in Lawrence Durrell's The East-West Encounter in Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet and Naguib Mahfouz’s The Cairo Trilogy Ph.D. Thesis Presented to the Faculty of Letters of the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Letters By Rachid Benfares From Morocco Accepted by the Faculty of Letters at the proposal of Prof. Dr. Thomas Hunkeler (First advisor) Prof. Dr. Michel Viegnes (Second advisor) Fribourg, May 10, 2016 Prof. Dr. Bernadette Charlier Pasquier (Dean of the Faculty of Letters) Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Prof. Dr. Thomas Hunkeler for his endless encouragement and his continuous support of my Ph.D. study. The completion of this thesis would have been impossible without his guidance, his patience, and his untiring assistance. My special thanks also to Prof. Dr. Michel Viegnes, Prof. Dr. Bernadette Charlier, Prof. Dr. Ute Heidmann, and Dr. Fabien Dubosson for their insightful comments and suggestions. Finally I would also like to show my gratitude to Christopher Kennard, Eva Bourgknecht, and Mohamed Ait Ougani for their services. To my mother To the memory of my father Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 1 I. Mahfouz and the Arabic novel ....................................................................................... 1 II. Durrell and the English novel ......................................................................................... 9 III. Why Mahfouz and Durrell? .......................................................................................... 14 Chapter 1 Historical, religious, and political contexts for The Alexandria Quartet and The Cairo Trilogy ................................................................................. 20 1.1. Alexandria as the starting point of Western civilisation ................................................. 22 1.2. The Coptic cause and The Alexandria Quartet ................................................................. 28 1.3. The Cairo Trilogy: a historical document ......................................................................... 36 1.3.1. Arab and Ottoman Egypt (641-1882) ............................................................................ 36 1.3.2. Egypt under the Veiled Protectorate (1882 to 1914) ................................................... 40 1.3.3. Egypt between the two world wars ................................................................................ 44 Chapter 2 The East in The Alexandria Quartet and the West in The Cairo Trilogy 50 2.1 The East in The Alexandria Quartet ........................................................................................ 52 2.1.1 The need to retreat .............................................................................................................. 52 2.1.2 The need to study and depict ............................................................................................. 57 2.1.3 The need to catalogue ......................................................................................................... 63 2.1.4 The need for the Occidental .............................................................................................. 67 2.1.5 Representations: ‘formation’ and ‘deformation’ ............................................................. 71 2.2 The West in The Cairo Trilogy .................................................................................................. 76 2.2.1 Admiration of Western science and philosophy ............................................................. 78 2.2.2 Admiration of Western women ......................................................................................... 83 2.2.3 Pro-West but anti-imperialist ............................................................................................. 91 2.3 Conclusions .............................................................................................................................. 98 Chapter 3 The city: between East and West ............................................................. 102 3.1 The City as metaphor ................................................................................................. 105 3.1.1 Alexandria: a city of disasters ........................................................................................... 105 3.1.2 The City between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ ................................................................................ 112 3.2 Cairo: a real Egyptian city ........................................................................................... 122 3.2.1 Coffeehouses: Cairo unveiled .......................................................................................... 122 3.2.2 Shops: Cairo unveiled once more ................................................................................... 132 3.3 Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 138 Chapter 4 Love and sexuality: between East and West ........................................... 142 4.1 The Alexandria Quartet: love and sexuality westernised ................................................. 144 4.1.1 Love and Western literature ............................................................................................. 144 4.1.2 Love and Western philosophy ......................................................................................... 154 4.1.3 Homosexuality denied ....................................................................................................... 161 4.2 The Cairo Trilogy: love and sexuality orientalised ........................................................... 166 4.2.1 When love simply becomes sex ....................................................................................... 166 4.2.2 Love and Eastern literature .............................................................................................. 173 4.2.3 Homosexuality accommodated ....................................................................................... 180 4.3 Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 184 Chapter 5 Religion: between East and West ............................................................. 187 5.1 Religion through Western lenses ................................................................................ 189 5.1.1 The Coptic plot: when religion is politicised ................................................................. 189 5.1.2 Alexandrian theosophies: towards an aesthetic of self-indulgence ............................ 199 5.2 Religion through Eastern lenses ................................................................................. 206 5.2.1 Ignorance and the irrational use of religion in The Cairo Trilogy ................................. 206 5.2.2 Science as a religion of the future ................................................................................... 216 5.3 Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 225 Chapter 6 Writing: between East and West (a modern palimpsest versus a modern family saga) ............................................................................................... 228 6.1 The Alexandria Quartet: a modern palimpsest ........................................................................ 231 6.1.1 Sub-narratives within the main narrative ....................................................................... 232 6.1.2 Fragmentation and unreliable narrators ......................................................................... 235 6.1.3 Repetition and rebuilding the story ................................................................................. 250 6.2 The Cairo Trilogy: a modern family saga .................................................................................. 254 6.2.1 Storytelling: a modern way of dealing with marriage ................................................... 256 6.2.2 Time and its mutations: dealing with time in a modern way ...................................... 261 6.2.3 Modernist influences in a realistic phase ........................................................................ 268 6.3 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................... 276 Conclusions and implications for further research ...................................................................... 280 I. Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 280 II. Implications for further research: translations ............................................................. 283 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................ 302 Online Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 312 Introduction The writers selected for this study are Lawrence Durrell and Naguib Mahfouz. The Cairo Trilogy and The Alexandria Quartet are both works about the same country during the same period: Egypt between the two Wars. However,
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