Dr. Mohamed Badawi, Professor of Criticism at the College of Arts, Cairo University, gave a lecture entitled: "Naguib Mahfouz and the Establishment of the Arabic Novel". The lecture came within the college's cultural program, which is organized by the Cultural Unit under the patronage of Prof. Dr. Majid Abdul Hameed Al Kaabi, Dean of the College.
Dr. Badawi talked about the role of Naguib Mahfouz in establishing the Arabic novel, as he made the novel an influential art in discussing social issues and questions of existence because of his insistence on writing the novel, and he did not stop at the historical stage in which he started his novels. He was always trying to develop his writing tools, responding to social and political changes, until he reached what Badawi called the socio-psychological stage, which combined an awareness of the political and social transformations witnessed by Egyptian society, and the psychological dimension of the character, who had to face those changes without being able to interfere or influence them. This helped Naguib Mahfouz to include in his novels a philosophical and cosmological dimension, transforming his novels from a mere expression of reality or a recording of changes to an expression of human concerns and internal failures and his fragility in front of the forces of underdevelopment and in front of authority.
Badawi also pointed out that the most important thing that Naguib Mahfouz did in the context of establishing the Arabic novel was to adapt the language, which in classical literature was associated with the sacred and the normative, to express events and the awareness of the characters and their psychological nature. As a result his language came close to the daily and the changing language, although it maintained its belonging to the standard language, and did not descend into the vernacular that Mahfouz refused to write in so that his novels would be read by the Arab readers anywhere in the Arab world.
Dr. Badawi has a number of publications in the field of criticism, including his important and foundational book on the Sixtieth Novel in Egypt, entitled "The New Novel in Egypt / A Study in Formation and Ideology", and the book "The Rhetoric of Lying", which he devoted to the old narrative. He was the editor-in-chief of the famous Egyptian Fosoul magazine. He was a member of the jury for a number of awards, including the Arabic Novel Award and the Sultan Al Owais Award.
