Arabic Children's Literature

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Susanne Abou Ghaida (Aix-Marseille Université)

Ed. by Dainy Bernstein, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 8.1.1: North African Writing and Culture: Arabic, Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanic.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Lia Brozgal (University of California, Los Angeles), Helen Rachel Cousins (Birmingham Newman University), Ziad Elmarsafy (King's College London), Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Dalia Mostafa (University of Manchester), Nora Parr (SOAS, University of London), Rita Sakr (Maynooth University)

Dates

Date of occurrence c.1800-

Places

Algeria (Location)
Bahrain (Location)
Comoros (Location)
Djibouti (Location)
Egypt (Location)
Iraq (Location)
Jordan (Location)
Kuwait (Location)
Lebanon (Location)
Libya (Location)
Mauritania (Location)
Morocco (Location)
Oman (Location)
Palestine (Location)
Qatar (Location)
Saudi Arabia (Location)
Somalia (Location)
Sudan (Location)
Syria (Location)
Tunisia (Location)
United Arab Emirates (Location)
Yemen (Location)

Genres and Modes

Children's Literature

Resources

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This article provides a history of Arabic children’s literature, defined here as Arabic-language children’s and adolescent literature, whether written in Standard or Colloquial Arabic. More specifically, the focus will be on books published predominantly in one of the twenty-two member states of the Arab League as well as in the diaspora. The mid-nineteenth century witnessed the advent of modernism in what we now refer to as the Arab region or Arab world, with one by-product being the emergence of Arabic children’s literature. This article therefore presents the history of Arabic children’s literature in terms of how political events and processes have shaped ideas of childhood/adolescence and the literature produced for this age group in the period stretching from 1850 to the…

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10009 words

Citation: Abou Ghaida, Susanne. "Arabic Children's Literature". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 December 2023 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19686, accessed 11 May 2024.]

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