Resumen de Configuring Literary Criticism in Morocco: a Narrative History to the 1950
This study is the initial part of over a century-long narrative history which seeks to map out the evolution of Moroccan literary criticism. Inspired by the Moroccan critic Mohamed Kharmach’s Al-Naqd al-Adabī al-Ḥadīth fī al-Maghrib: 1900-1956, this study extends from the early twentieth century to the mid-1950s, one of the least mapped territories of literary criticism in Moroccan academia and elsewhere. It explores its outset in the 1920s as taqrīẓāt (celebratory statements) and musāmarāt (society speeches); its growth in the 1930s into an activity and pursuit designed to aid in building a cultural identity; and its “maturity” as a critical enterprise debating and probing Moroccan, Arabic and Western literatures. It explores the historical backdrops, critical endeavours and intellectual conversations behind the making of the pre-1950s literary criticism. It argues that, despite burgeoning critical voices and views, this critical enterprise could not mature into approaches or movements based on theoretical and methodological underpinnings conducive to reading and judging literature. Certain “critics” abandoned, depreciated and misused criticism whereas others whose critical skills were unmatched but untapped advanced the critical enterprise through the introduction of nonnative ways of reading literature. These, however, did not evolve longer due to colonialism, an embryonic criticism and intense controversies. Simply put, the pre-1950s literary criticism in Morocco was a tale of two critical camps: talented but undevoted critics versus intrusive critics.
