Between Wonderment and Estrangement: Arab intellectuals travelling in Europe (19th-20th centuries)

This article makes use of the concept of estrangement – formulated by Viktor Šklovskij in 1917 – in order to analyze some travel writings by those Arab intellectuals (Rifā‘a Rāfi‘ al-Ṭahṭāwī, Salīm Bustrus, Amīn Fikrī, Aḥmad Zakī, Muḥammad Kurd ‘Alī) who chose Europe as their destination of travel between the 19th and 20th centuries. The authors analyzed are considered among the chief exponents of the Nahḍa, or Renaissance, and come from Egypt, the Syrian-Lebanese area. Some are Muslims, some Christians. Together, though, they represent the motley reality of the Middle East. This analysis aims to provide further confirmation of the versatility of travel literature and its ability to adapt itself to the requirements of modernity. Nonetheless, our study keeps drawing on the stylistic features of traditional literature that, in this case, include the ‘ajā’ib and the maqāma, two literary forms that become a procedure of estrangement whereby the authors under consideration reinterpret and remodel modernity.