Literature and History: Critical Insights on Sobhi Fahmawi's Novel "Akhenaton and Nefertiti the Canaanite”

الأدبُ والتَّاريخُ: نظراتٌ نقديَّةٌ في روايةِ صبحي فحماوي "أخناتون ونفرتيتي الكنعانية"

Abstract

This study deals with Subhi Fahmawi's novel “Akhenaten and Nefertiti the Canaanite” as a historical novel reading the past from some of its weaknesses, and casting, at the same time, its shadows on the present. The study is divided into an introduction tackling the relationship between literature and history, a new historicist approach to "Akhenaten and Nefertiti the Canaanite", and a critical reading of the novel through modern visions. These divisions treat in succession the main critical trends prevailing in investigating of the relationship between literature, especially the novel, and history, with an emphasis on the trend of new historicism and the extent to which the novel is consistent in its details with the rules of this trend, as well as the historical events and their interactions between the ancient Egyptians and their counterparts: Amenhotep the Fourth - Akhenaten and Princess Elham - Nefertiti and the path in which the relationship between them evolved into love, marriage and stability, and to the emergence of Akhenaten’s achievement and his new religion with the support of Nefertiti, and then his fall through a series of repercussions, with a review of the time vision in the novel with reference to the spatial one. The research work attempts to apply the terminology of Western critics to the Arabic historical novel by Subhi Fahmawi and discuss it closely, especially in the light of a new historicist approach, and arrive at the judgments extracted by the readers of the historical novel of Fahmawi, in order to present a possible critical reading of the novel through the perspective of the historical novel that leads to answers and raises new questions. The methodology followed in the study can be critically described as descriptive and analytical, using the references available in Arabic and English on those raised issues.