Naguib Mahfouz’s trilogy and social reality : study in sociology of literature

Abstract EN

Literature is a social system that uses language as a medium, language is also a social innovation, and if literature represents life, then life itself is a social reality, as Rene Wellek asserts.

Literature has always had a job to do, and it is impossible to be purely individual in nature, so it can be said that most problems and issues raised by literature are social problems and issues.

Perhaps the best illustration of these facts is the view of Tomers that aesthetic systems are not promoted based on social systems, and are not part of social systems, “because they themselves are social systems of a pattern, and are relevant to other systems.

”(Ahmed 1).

The novel is “one of the literary genres that portrays the social reality in all its stages of development, in all its conditions, and puts branches in the face of its problems.

” (Bedir 11).

The novel is the message which the group sends to society with the aim of correcting the situation or modifying an idea in mind or discussing a crisis expressed by this group through its creator.

It announces its vision in this work.

This paper sheds light on an Egyptian family that live in the Egyptian society and shows the social influence on the different characters staring from the second decade to the fifth decade of the 20^th century in the Trilogy of Naguib Mahfouz to prove that man can never separate himself from the society in which he lives and all his actions are mainly a kind of reaction to his surroundings.