Gibran, Rihani & Naimy

East–West Interactions in Early Twentieth-Century Arab Literature

Originally published in Russian during the final years of the Soviet Union, this volume examines the influences of foreign literary movements, specifically Romanticism and Realism, on the three authors examined within. By viewing Gibran and Rihani’s works in the light of English poets such as Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley and American writers such as Emerson and Whitman—and by exploring Naimy through the lens of the Russian Realist tradition, drawing parallels specifically with the work of Belinsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and the Chekhovian tradition—this work provides an unusual window into the Arab world’s cultural interaction with Europe, America, and Russia in the early 20th century. At the same time, it reaches beyond its academic scope and reveals universal elements that speak to all people and go beyond cultural frameworks altogether.