The Case of Rhyme Versus Reason pdf download

Book Title	The Case Of Rhyme Versus Reason
Book Author	Robert C. Mckinney
Total Pages	676
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Language	English
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The Case of Rhyme Versus Reason – Ibn Al-Rumi and His Poetics In Context by Robert C. Mckinney

THE CASE OF RHYME VERSUS REASON

Book Preface

This book is devoted to an examination of the poetic contribution of the very prolific and versatile ‘Abbàsid poet, Ibn al-Rùmì (d. 283/896) and it consists of three parts. Part I, The Poet, is concerned with Ibn al-Rùmì himself, his literary persona, and his reception among both medieval and modern critics.

 It also explores the literary and intellectual currents prevailing in his times with the aim of providing the background for Part II. Part II, The Poetry, traces the influences in Ibn al-Rùmì’s distinctive poetic style, as also in his themes, of that unique period of “floraison” during which he lived.

Part III, The Poem, analyzes his celebrated poem written to commemorate the quashing of the Zanj rebellion, during the course of which historical, bio-bibliographical, and literary sources from within the Arabic tradition, as well as studies of various classical and Renaissance pieces of literature, and anthropological studies of ritual and ancient Arabian institutions, are consulted in order to elucidate both the immediate intent of the poem and its deeper ritual message, form and structure.

The value of the present study resides in two main points. Firstly, it brings together in a single monograph all of the numerous arguments that have been advanced concerning the extent to which Ibn al-Rùmì was influenced by the Greek philosophical and physical sciences.

Direct influence is categorically denied, but indirect influence, though more difficult both to prove or to refute, would seem likely in the poet’s case. Some of the arguments that have been advanced are rebutted, some are partially accepted, and others are acknowledged as sound.

In addition, new channels of influence formerly uncharted are also examined.

What emerges from this survey of those thematic and stylistic characteristics of the poet’s oeuvre that are deemed unique is a picture that represents, in numerous ways, a competing conception of poetic art.

It is a picture that provides a glimpse into an exciting and rather fluid period of Arabic literary history, in which the boundary between poetry and the prose arts was becoming increasingly permeable.

This was due to the rise of a class of what Ibn al-Nadìm called the “secretary-poets (al-shu’arà” al-kuttàb),” but particularly to

 the prevalence and importance of the phenomenon known as the munàΩarah.

This term originally denoted a theological disputation, with its own increasingly codified rules and methods, but the format was soon adopted by all intellectual disciplines. Considerable attention is devoted to the munàΩarah because it is the phenomenon that perhaps best typifies the cultural and intellectual life of the 3rd/9th century.

It brought together people of all religious and political per- suasions, all ethnic backgrounds, and all walks of life, including, of course, poets and chancellery secretaries like Ibn al-Rùmì, and it acquainted participants and observers alike with each other’s methods and systems of argument, beliefs, concepts, and values, and thus facilitated that “osmosis” that has been posited is responsible for the indirect influence of disparate cultures, one on the other, that occurred at this time.

These munàΩarahs preoccupied Ibn al-Rùmì’s contemporaries and were of paramount importance in promoting the dis- semination of Greco-Roman rhetorical theory and practice, and in the development of the nascent prose arts, particularly of the argumentative and persuasive varieties.

It is known that Ibn al-Rùmì participated in these disputations, as did many of his patrons, and their influence on the development of his own poetic style is examined.

Secondly, this study presents an exhaustive analysis of a full qaßìdah in 282 lines with a view to establishing the inner “logic” of the poem.

The extreme length—by no means atypical—of this panegyric qaßìdah, however, precludes the analysis of more than this one major poem, though many shorter poems and representative sections from numerous other longer poems will be cited, either translated or paraphrased and discussed during the course of the study.

Although the celebrated poem chosen for this study does not exhibit the eminently ludic aspect of the poet’s personality and oeuvre, due largely to the seriousness of the occasion of its composition and the eminence of the men to whom it was dedicated, it nonetheless well exemplifies the poet’s penchant for the literary phenomenon known as istiqßà” al-ma’ànì, or exhaustive pursuit of poetic conceits, and concomitant †ùl al-nafas, or long-windedness.

The poem also manifests very sophisticated organization, observable in a “two-dimensional” patterning and in a multitude of complex interrelationships which lend the poem “perspective.” The resulting towering architectonics of the poem offers a unique opportunity for the researcher to pursue an elucidation of “the micro-poetics of a macro-qaßìdah.”

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