_Zaynab_ : Experiences of Critical Reception: A comparative Study

Abstract: This research focuses on the critical reception ways of a literary work written by an Egyptian pioneer in the twentieth century. The ways the audience receive the novel _Zaynab_, written by Mohammed Husayn Haykal, are varied since its early publication. This variation can easily be detected on two levels: technically and ideologically. On the critical perspective, the repercussion of this novel has produced a kind of reception that can hardly be attained through any contemporary literary work.

Moreover, the research raises some questions relevant to the quality of the reception_ aesthetics of reception_ through designing a study plan of tripartite entrance based on the theory of reception, the experience gained by most critics of the genre to which the literary work is anticipated- the style and theme of the previous works- the drift in between its language and the poetic language used. In addition, the study is going to test the originality of foreign studies run on our Arab literature by comparing them with Arab readings.

These two approaches, reception and comparison, will be considered in order to answer a group of questions: Did Haykal_s viewpoints get changed from a definite stage into another due to certain considerations or passions? Did Haykal think of establishing an intellectual enterprise that reflects fixed personal convictions? Did any sort of comparison between the European and the traditional religious perspectives appear in his works? Were those studies based on contemporary or modern critical methodological visions? Was it concerned with the technical aspect in the structure of the novel or that it paid greater attention to the intellectual activity of its author?