This path-breaking book re-examines the east-west cultural encounter during the early renaissance in 19th-century Egypt, focusing on the contact zone of literary translations, particularly the earliest translations of French literature into Arabic. Carol Bardenstein challenges the prevailing view of a passive cultural influence by proposing a more complex, transculturating model. She illustrates how translations assert an indigenous sensibility, countering the perception of borrowing from the prestigious French literary tradition, which many in the Egyptian intellectual vanguard saw as a means to civilize a perceived underdeveloped Arabic literary tradition. Through translations of works by La Fontaine, Bernardin de St. Pierre, Moliere, and Racine, Muhammad Uthman Jalal indigenized these texts by Arabizing, Islamicizing, and Egyptianizing them. This approach not only created a corpus of indigenized literary texts but also engaged in experimenting with the contours of the community that would shape modern Arabic literature. It anticipated later ideological discussions about collective affiliation and identification, exploring identities such as Arab, pan-Arab, regional Egyptian, and pan-Islamic in the context of shifting dynamics following Ottomanism.
