Arabic Poetics: Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization)

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Moreover, some scholars refuse to have any connection with the past and cut their ties with it as a representative of imitation and absolutely deny interest in anything that comes from traditions and heritage. Thus, the constitution and interpretation of Arabic literature imposed itself as a particular exegesis of the sacred Text. As the title suggests, Harb’s main concern is with the poeticity of language: what makes something poetic? Alternatively (and much less ambitiously) I hope to provide a handy guide for those scholars of the history of literary criticism who are already, for some reason, looking for Arabic ideas. His outstanding study also introduces a much-needed discussion about the ‘visual literariness’ of the hieroglyphic writing in comparison with our alphabetic scripts.

A century ago, pioneering Egyptian Egyptologist Ahmad Kamal Pasha gained little traction for his plea to compare ancient Egyptian with Arabic, a kindred language from within the same phylum (now known as Afro-Asiatic). Fayza Haikal, the American University in Cairo {"}Hany Rashwan takes a significant step beyond existing scholarly traditions, revealing typological similarities between ancient Egyptian and Arabic poetics. In the classical period, poetry and prose reached a high level of refinement and attained standards which are still being applied in the modern Arab world today. In doing so he has revealed new layers of meaning that are essential for an adequate understanding of the literary merit of the ancient texts.

In its constant dynamism, it clashes with the stability that emanates from symbols of the past that try to maintain the position of tribal postulates. And while the rational meanings of poetry can produce wonder, Jurjānī’s watershed notion of takhyīl, which Harb translates as ‘make-believe,’ truly shows why poetry is tied to wonder. His publications include Going out in Daylight – prt m hrw: The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead – translation, sources, meanings (2013). Amidst a stormy national and literary atmosphere that was confused regarding future paths, the magazine initially tried to establish a different kind of poetic and literary activity that stressed the individual during the period of Arab nationalism, as it sought collective and common harmonizing elements among the people. After presenting an account of the nature of classical Arabic literary theory, its various approaches to literary assessment, its topics and historical development, the Introduction highlights that the main aspects of literary expression Arabic criticism was concerned with lay in rhetorical figures (badīʿ), simile (tashbīh), figurative speech (majāz), metaphor (istiʿāra), metonymy (kināya), and sentence construction (naẓm).

Hany Rashwan compares the stylistic Arabic literary device of jinās, or word play, a key literary device pervading medieval and modern Arabic poetry, literary prose, songs, and proverbs, with its counterpart in ancient Egyptian. Finally, this chapter traces the French and English source texts and investigates their influence on the poetic and literary works in the magazine, which indicates, as we shall see, the dominance of the cultural atmosphere of these texts over the literary and cultural direction of the magazine.Listening carefully and humbly to what the primary texts have to say allowed me to see patterns, assumptions, and ultimately a theory of literary aesthetics. As a phenomenon of civilization, Arab modernism does not differ from other similar cultural phenomena in other civilizations. This chapter explains the historical development of Majallat Shi‘r by exploring its issues and the key people involved in influencing its literary direction, especially its two pillars: founder, Yūsuf al-Khāl (1917–1987), and poet ’Adūnīs (‘Alī ’Aḥmad Sa‘īd) (b.