Abstract: | The medieval Arab world up to the 19th century was not familiar with drama as a written literary genre. By the mid-nineteenth century, the modern Arab theatre began to take shape under the influence of growing contacts with Europe. The first Arab playwrights were the Lebanese Marun an-Naqqas (1817-1855), the Syrian Ahmad Abu Halil al-Qabbani (1833-1906), and the Egyptian Ya' qub Sannu' (c. 1870). In the 1930s and 1940s, modern theatrical forms existed in the majority of the Arab countries. The present paper surveys the main genres and trends: adaptations of European drama, adaptations of Arab legends and history, neoclassicism, romanticism, realism, and, during the second period of modern Arab drama from the 1960s onwards, neorealism, symbolism, expressionism, and absurdism. Notes, ref. |