The Poetics of Ancient and Classical Arabic Literature

The Poetics of Ancient and Classical Arabic Literature: Orientology

THE POETICS OF ANCIENT AND CLASSICAL ARABIC LITERATURE – Book Sample

The Poetics of Ancient and Classical Arabic Literature -through analyzing ancient and classical Arabic literature, including the

Qur’an, from within the Arabic literary tradition, this book provides an original interpretation of poetics, and of other important aspects of Arab culture.

Arabic literature is a realm of poetry; prose literary forms emerged rather late, and even then, remained in the shadow of poetic creative efforts. Traditionally, this literature has been viewed through a philologist’s lens and has often been represented as “materialistic” in the sense that its poetry laed imagination.

As a result, Arabic poetry was often evaluated negatively in relation to other poetic traditions. The Poetics of Ancient and Classical Arabic Literature argues that old Arabic literature is remarkably coherent in poetical terms and has its own individuality, and that claims of its materialism arise from a failure to grasp the poetic principles of the Arabic tradition.

 Analysing the Qur’an, which is known for confronting the poetry of the time, this book reveals that “post Qur’anic” literature came to be defined against it. Thus, the constitution and interpretation of Arabic literature imposed itself as a particular exegesis of the sacred Text.

Disputing traditional interpretations by arguing that Arabic literature can only be assessed from within, and not through comparison with other literary traditions, this book is of interest to students and scholars of Islamic Studies, Arabic Studies and Literary Studies.

Esad Duraković holds a PhD in the field of Arabic literature from the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade and is Professor of Arabic Languages and Arabic Literature at the University of Sarajevo. His research interests focus on literary interpretation from Arabic.

Contents

• Preliminary considerations
• Preface to the English-language edition
• About the author
• Introduction
• 1 Poetics of the Arabesque
• 2 The deductive poetics of the Qur’an
• Intertextuality and contextualization
• 3 The Qur’anic Text’s advance on tradition
• The Qur’an confronting poetry at the level of ideology
• The Qur’an confronting poetry at the level of form
• 4 The simile in Old Arabic poetry: a world at a distance
• Prologue: the realism or “materialism” of Old Arabic poetry
• Figures of description and the profusion of themes in poems
• Obviousness and transparency of the world and the necessity of distance
• Segmentation of textual space
• Gradation of textual time
• Concentration on the flatness of the physical
• Typicality before description
• Constituents of the simile as architects of positivity
• The simile and the travelogue airiness of the world
• 5 The Qur’anic metaphor: the world within
• Descent of the metaphor into the world and the metaphoric revolution
• The Text unveiled in language and stylistics
• Realism of the simile and transfer of the metaphor: poet’s belle and houris
• in Jannah
• Past time of the simile and processuality of the metaphor
• Transparency of the world in the simile and the metaphoric vertical world
• order
• The simile undertaking segmentation and centripetal forces of the
• metaphor
• 6 Maturation of post-Qur’anic poetics and literary tradition
• Normative poetics and the difficulty of literature periodisation
• The Qur’anic text as a generator of changes in tradition
• Philology as impetus and a trap
• Philology: text’s authenticity and author’s originality
• The authority of philology and Shu’ubiyyah
• Tradition as a reservoir of motifs and poetic technique
• Poetic theme not necessarily sublime
• The origin of poetic motifs in Arabic antiquity
• Motifs as commonplaces or topoi
• Triumph of philological poetics: spreading across the entire Islamic
• cultural community
• Form as a technique or philotechnic poetry
• Prevalence of artistic form and the servility of criticism
• Poetic inspiration and technique
• Universalism of philological poetics: tradition as inspiration
• A reservoir of motifs and the legalisation of “literary theft”
• The artistically beautiful and literary theft: contrasting the sacred text
• and poetry
• Isolation of tradition: the lack of influence of Aristotle’s poetics
• The dawn of a new age
• Bibliography
• Further reading
• Name index
• Subject index

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