Introduction: Nahḍah Narratives

Abstract In the last decade, the field of Nahḍah Studies has been gathering momentum. Scholars from different subject-areas have highlighted several aspects of the 19th–early 20th century cultural fervor in the Arab and south Mediterranean area. Accordingly, the whole set of Nahḍah narratives has been readdressed. By “Nahḍah narratives” we mean both the set of theoretical readings, definitions and views developed by the nahḍawī groundswell, itself and the metacritical narratives developed by international scholarship on the Arab Nahḍah. In dialogue with the recent scholarship, the papers collected here represent a contribution in questioning the “Arab awakening”: their theoretical approaches, crossing comparative literature, literary analysis, history of ideas — achieve a broader understanding of the movement, dwelling especially on intersections with other disciplines and widening the research on the Nahḍah from the point of view of cultural production. The focus on modern Arab journalism, theatre, translation, political essays, prose and poetry writing which characterizes this special issue of Oriente Moderno attempts at going beyond the critical perspectives of a Nahḍah molded on Euro-centric modernity, on a diffusionist model of text circulation and on a “retrospective” idea of a modernity-to-be.