Fiction, Religion, and Premodern Arab-Islamic Literature (Eighth–Eighteenth Centuries)
Résumé
In the premodern era, assumed fictions are rare. As God is the creator of everything, he is the invisible author of all narratives, including the global history of the world as elaborated by the Koran. From a political point of view, to reinforce their legitimacy, Arab-Muslim dynasties wanted the Koranic model to remain unique. The first books of fiction appeared when foreign works were adapted into Arabic. Other fiction followed, more local and more Islamic. Indeed, they had to fit into an evolving Islam, whose rules were based mainly on theologians and caliphs, intermediaries between God and man. But most pre-modern Arab-Muslim fiction prefers to build worlds where intermediaries are unnecessary, even deceptive, and where success comes from a direct relationship with God.
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