This study examines the transformation of literary criticism in the context of contemporary digital and cultural change, with particular emphasis on the Arabic critical field. It investigates how digital technologies, interactive media, and artificial intelligence have challenged traditional critical concepts such as text, authorship, reading, interpretation, and aesthetic judgment. The article aims to clarify the theoretical shifts produced by digitization and to propose a contemporary vision for Arabic literary criticism that remains attentive to both technological innovation and cultural specificity. Methodologically, the study adopts a multi-layered approach that combines historical analysis, critical interpretation, and comparative synthesis. It draws on major contributions in digital humanities, reception theory, computational criticism, and modern Arabic criticism in order to trace the evolution of key concepts and assess their relevance in the digital age. The analysis focuses on how emerging digital environments have redefined the relationships among text, reader, and critic, while also creating new possibilities for large-scale literary analysis, participatory reading, and algorithm-assisted interpretation. The study argues that digital criticism should not replace established humanistic approaches, but rather expand them through methodological pluralism. It concludes that the future of Arabic literary criticism depends on integrating close reading with computational methods, developing Arabic-specific digital tools, and maintaining critical awareness of ethical issues such as bias, representation, and cultural marginalization. In this sense, digital Arabic criticism must balance innovation with tradition in order to produce more comprehensive and context-sensitive critical practices.
Moussa Omar (Thu,) studied this question.