A Comparative Study of Reasons for the Rise of the Novel in Iran and Egypt

One of the research fields of comparative literature، is the study of literary genres’ genesis and the examination of the quality of their growth and development. Fiction، especially the novel، is one of the important and significant contexts of comparative research. This article، prepared by a library method، studies and analyzes the reasons for the rise of the novel in Iran and Egypt، which are the two most important cradles of Persian and Arabic literature. The novel form in Iran and Egypt appeared more or less simultaneously، in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Because of such common factors as similar political and social conditions، the rise of modernist movements، the advent of the printing industry، the establishment of science academies، the impact or hegemony of western culture، the translation movement، and the rise of the intelligentsia، the emergence of the novel has coincided in both countries. This article studies all these common reasons for the rise of the novel، and introduces the first major novels in these two cultural contexts.