ARABIC LITERATURE (FACULTY OF LETTERS AND HUMANITIES)
Year:2020 | Volume:11 | Issue:2 |Papers Count:16

The most prominent literary characteristic of Ibrahim Nasrallah is the fact that he attempts to make unique works which attract readers and make them reflect on his poetry which has Palestine as its main theme; deviation from literary norms is considered as one of the tools consciously used by him to reach this goal. This study examines his poetry collection Green Wood in order to highlight the way his utilization of artistic methods and linguistic deviation, i. e. leaving the rules of standard language, provides him with a distinct poetic language which is able to consciously convey his ideas and feelings about Palestinians and express their pains artistically. The findings demonstrate that Nasrallah uses various ways to deviate from the common language in order to foreground his text. Reading the poems in the aforementioned collection affirms the fact that metaphor and hyperbaton are used by the poet more often than simile, synesthesia, and paradox and this shows his considerable attention to semantic deviation— a technique which he frequently uses in his works. This focus on semantic deviation demonstrates his power to create meanings for his ideas and feelings about Palestine and to present these thoughts and emotions to the reader. Furthermore, using new collocations and visual aspects of writing imply the power of his creative thought to visualize the meanings and transfer his concepts to the reader. Thus, in Green Wood, foregrounding and creation of new meanings by relying on linguistic tools lead to creation of dynamic speech and improvement of the literary value of the work; and while it makes the process of understanding of meaning lengthy, it makes readers distant from superficial understanding and involves them in a deep exploration for understanding substrata of meaning. So, semantic deviation plays a constructive role in this respect and as it has great influence on the reader.

In the religious context, the Devil’ s rebellion in the creation myth represents sin, evil, and eternal damnation. But sometimes writers, by disturbing familiar signs and defamiliarization of names such as the Devil, recreate religious myths which are of a new form and which, regarding their content, oppose the original ones and, thus, are not very consistent with public opinion. The present research, focusing on the practice of defamiliarization of familiar concepts, examines the symbolic representation of the Devil in the poems of Khalil Hawi and Forough Farrokhzad who, with a different conception of this symbol, have transcended the borders of religious concepts. As deconstruction of literary works into their sources and influences destroys their entirety, the article employs a methodology which does not consider the way the text has influenced other texts and has been influenced by them. Thus, we study the poems of two poets who have no relation to each other and are not influenced by each other. In fact, what makes the article to focus on the foregoing poems of Farrokhzad and Hawi is that they enable us to find new meanings in relation to the Devil, meanings which are a form of deviation and a new expression of the concept of the Devil. These points provide a context in which we can study the content of the poems of the two poets in a comparative manner. So, the article tries to reexamine the poems of Farrokhzad and Hawi to demonstrate that they have used Koranic images and stories to recreate the Devil and that how their shared resources such as existential thoughts and familiarity with the works of Western romantics along with their successive failures in life have affected their poems in this regard so that Farrokhzad’ s poetry is the cry of the captive humanity and Hawi’ s is the scream of a patriot who has reached deadlock.

The theory of paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes developed by Roman Jacobson is one of the important approaches employed in semantic and formalist criticism. This theory has a unique function in discovering the internal meanings of linguistic structures and, in particular, the study of contemporary literature and the innovations of the authors of this era. Mohammad Ali Shams al-Din is one of the contemporary modern poets of Lebanese resistance literature who fashioned stunning imagery by creating innovative methods of linking elements of discourse. Taking note of the complexity and multi-layered concinnity of Shams al-Din’ s poetry, the present paper seeks to employ a descriptive-analytic method to elicit the aesthetic elements of his ode “ Al-Nazaloon Ala al-Riyh” based on paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes. This leads to an analysis of the covert semantic relations found in this literary work, as well as to discovering the innovative symbols used in it, and to determining the extent of its relevance to Iranian history, on the one hand, and the Islamic-Shi’ i culture on the other. The results of the discussion indicate that Shams al-Din, by carefully selecting his words and combining them in paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes, has made intricate and delicate concinnities, using the literary devices of Ī hā m (a literary device in which the author’ s words, phrases, or sentences do not have a fixed interpretation and can be interpreted in different ways), metaphor, and irony. Furthermore, he, for the first time, using the symbols of Iranian history, like Zenobia, along with the novel symbols derived from the Koranic culture and the battle of Karbala, such as wind and zabiha (the Islamic method of slaughtering halal animals), exhibited the interrelation of Arab, Iranian, and Islamic cultures. Moreover, the nature of his poetry is such that in critique and analysis of his literature, the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes work properly and efficiently.

Syntactic deviation is one of the techniques employed to enhance a literary text, because it derives from the poet’ s intentional non-compliance with morphological or syntactic rules to achieve certain goals. Using this technique leads to eloquence of language so that it directs the reader’ s attention to the text. Contemporary poets attempt to use this technique in their poetry to inspire the reader with new feelings and, disturbing the usual order of objects, they try to represent them in a brand new way. In this way, the modern Iraqi poet, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab— to whose literary genius contemporary Arabic poetry owes much— has devoted himself to the development of his poetic language and has evoked the reader’ s contemplation on his poetry. In some cases, he offers a different language by breaking the norms and moving away from the prevailing principles of poetry. Under the influence of Western culture and literature, he had a critical look at the heritage of Arabic poetry and made a significant contribution to the development of Arabic poetic language. This research tries to examine the syntactic and rhetorical deviations of Sayab’ s poems in a descriptive-analytical manner in order to elicit his techniques of defamiliarization and make the reader focus on the poet’ s main intention and the hidden layers of his work. The results of the research demonstrate that hyperbaton, omission of letters and the use of new ones, conjunction and separation of words, and using far-fetched words are the most frequent examples of syntactic and rhetorical deviations in Sayyab’ s poetry. Therefore, using such techniques, Sayyab gives his poetry a distinctive character so that the reader’ s difficulty understanding his new form of expression and their sensual perception time are increased. The research also argues that the syntactic and rhetorical deviation is one of the aesthetic and stylistic qualities of all the free-verse poems of Sayyab.

Reader-response theories, as a modern type of criticism, open new horizons of aesthetics of literary texts to us. Emphasizing the role and importance of the audience, these theories examine how the literary text and the reader are related. One of the terms specific to these theories is the “ implied reader. ” This reader, as the link between the text and the actual reader, provides the means to analyze their interaction. In this paper, the context of the emergence of the “ implied reader” in Ibn al-Farid’ s “ The Wine Ode” and al-A’ sha’ s “ The Music of Poetry” is examined. The former is a spiritual and encoded Anacreontic and the latter is a material one. It is argued that whereas wine in Ibn al-Farid’ s poem is the center of gravity of his hymn and the implied reader is totally mesmerized by it, the implied reader of al-A’ sha’ s poem does not consider the centrality of the poem to be wine itself, but its effects and pleasures. On the other hand, the implicit readers of both poems are interested in music, but each in their own type of music. “ The Music of Poetry” is, more than anything, a reflection of the life, soul and emotion that the poet has prepared his poetry for; each component of it has to be is in harmony with the whole matrix of the work. Its Anacreontic music is soft and gentle while the other, that is “ The Wine Ode, ” moves toward an orgy. Although we sometimes see common musical allegories in the poems, in general, and considering the rest of the allegories, it turns out that despite their few resemblances, each has a different geometry, and all their differences and similarities do not indicate the superiority of one over the other; rather, they demonstrate that each adopts a unique system of music in accordance with its own implied reader’ s demand.

Mohammad Ali Shams al-Din is one of the contemporary modernist poets of Lebanon. Due to his familiarity with Western literature and literary schools and his interest in Eastern mysticism, his poetry is of a unique style. His contemporaneity with the emergence of the school of surrealism, along with his mystical tendencies, has greatly influenced the poet so that his poems seem to be written unconsciously. Considering that he turned to surrealism, his poetry is written unconsciously as surrealism is based on the unconscious. He considers himself to be a poet of the supernatural whose roots lie in the universe of the unseen. One of the most prominent manifestations of surrealism in his poetry is the domination of dream over all of his poems. Revealing different aspects of the three features of surrealism, which are insanity, dream and automatic writing, in the poems of Shams al-Din, in addition to introducing the poet’ s ideas and attitudes, helps identify his poetic style. The necessity of this study is underlined by the fact that, so far, no comprehensive research has been done investigating the way surrealism, as a literary school which originated in the West, and an Eastern thought, that is Iranian-Islamic mysticism, influenced Shams al-Din’ s poetry. So, this article endeavors to demonstrate that Shams al-Din has been under the influence of Iranian, Islamic, and Arab culture and civilization in his surrealistic tendencies and style. It is also noteworthy that autobiography is one of the methods that Shams al-Din uses to express his inner experiences and mindset, especially in his mystical poems as this type of writing, i. e. autobiography, is based on the unconscious and is one of the main mediums employed in the school of surrealism. The present study, by scrutinizing the surrealistic factors in Shams al-Din’ s poetry, contends that the three features of surrealism have crucial roles in his poetry.

Harmonizing text and image to produce a meaningful and purposeful text is a discourse process and, thus, a social and cultural one. This social practice is of great importance and value in children stories— and generally children literature— as, for children, it does not merely operate at a socio-cultural level but at an intercultural one. This is the case because children’ s speed of image processing and decoding is greater than their speed of processing linear texts. Al-Qandil Al-Saqir is one of the best short stories by Ghassan Kanfani, an author of Palestinian resistance literature, which employs a multi-faceted discourse to instill the concepts of ideology, value, and resistance in Palestinian children who need to be educated. Kanafani has fully understood that Palestinian children, as those who make the future of their homeland, have an important mission to accomplish, namely liberation from the domination of the Zionists. So, encoding the reality is the most prominent characteristic of his story. He is also aware of the ability of temporal, spatial and visual signs, as factors which are complementary to meaning, in consolidating the text, catching the child’ s attention, and conveying the message of the text. The story brings a number of questions to mind: How can social semiotics, as a new tendency, be utilized to discover the underlying layers of meaning and discourse analysis in the text and illustrations of the story? What kind of linguistic processes are used by the author to express the bitter experiences of Palestinian children in a better way? What kind of textual coherence is used by the author in order to better define these experiences? This descriptive, analytical study employs a social semantic approach to analyze Kanafani’ s short story. This analysis is expected to answer the above questions in order to provide a new reading of the story.

The concrete portrayal of abstract concepts (especially the concept of “ death” ) is very evident in the poetry of the Age of Ignorance. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the manner of portrayal and creation of conceptual blending of “ death” in this age. In order to explore this subject, we have employed the “ four mental spaces” model developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner to study a selection of poems written during the Age of Ignorance (The selection includes poems of Antarah ibn Shaddad, Zahayr ibn Abi Salma, Umayya ibn Abi al-Salt, Abu Zueyb Hozalli. ). Then, we have provided a linguistic evaluation of their image/thought-evoking boundaries based on the principles of cognitive semantic theory. The results of the study indicate that some of the created concepts in these poems are not limited to one blending and require more blending models. This is explained by the poet’ s mind and its ability to choose words and arrange them in a way that a new conceptual blending is created and, as a result, multiple images are evoked in the mind. The semantic networks of these poems are a single-scope network (conceptual metaphor) of two states with average creativity and a double-scope network of four states with maximum creativity. The blending of subjective concepts in the advanced semantic networks indicates the creativity of the poets of the Age of Ignorance, who, inspired by their surroundings, had managed to create a new dynamic space between words. Based on the studies of cognitive linguistics, the arrangement of words and their blending in compounds demonstrate the poets’ abilities in this field. Also, the pragmatics of conceptual blending enables the readers to view the cognitive components of the poetry of the Age of Ignorance in a new light and, subsequently, their perception of these concepts is widened.

Imam Hassan’ s speech on his peace with Muawiyah is one of the most credible documents that can be analyzed and investigated to go through the underlying causes of the peace and the rejection of Muawiyah’ s false claims on caliphate. Muawiyah started to oppose Imam Hassan’ s right to caliphate since the beginning of his imamate; he tried hard to isolate him by winning his companions over. Thus, he coerced Imam Hassan into accepting the peace. After signing the peace agreement, Muawiyah declared that Imam Hassan considered him worthy of caliphate and believed him to be the only competent person for this position. After this declaration from Muawiyah, Imam Hassan presented a sermon. A first look at the speech reveals that the introduction and the beginning have no consistency with Muawiah’ s false claims. So, the writers take a closer look and use a pragmatic approach to analyze the speech to examine its latent points and to relate the introduction and other sections of the speech with Muawiyah’ s claim. Using the evidence within and outside the text, the authors clarify the aforementioned vagueness, Imam’ s reason for presenting this speech, and the illocutionary act of the speaker. The results of the research demonstrate the reason for the choice of this kind of speech by Imam and his goal for addressing various topics in the speech. The context of the situation, the type of audience, and even the issue of opposition of most of Imam’ s close companions necessitated Imam’ s dealing with seemingly irrelevant topics such as the Prophet, his companions, and Ahl al-Bayt to alter his audience’ s point of view. There are even issues less relevant to Moawiyah’ s speech— such as Salawat, Khums, and Sadaqah— yet they all serve his ultimate goal as they enable him to indirectly convince the audience of his right to caliphate.

Mahmood al-Sa’ dani is an Egyptian contemporary satirist, journalist, and author. Many of his works are satires on socio-political issues of the Arab society. Humor is the only way he uses to express his thoughts and ideas freely and to criticize the cultural, political, social, and living conditions of the Arab world. His satirical speech explains the spiritual needs of the Egyptian society. In his book Himer Min al-Sharq, which is a controversial parody of Tawfiq al-Hakim’ s novel A Sparrow from the East, Sa’ dani depicts the cultural confrontation of the East and the West through his journey to Paris. In favor of the French culture, he criticizes the negative— or unfavorable— aspects of the Arab world and its social and political corruption with so artistic a satirical language. The irony is that he expresses the problems of the Arab society by praising them. Employing a descriptive-analytical method, the authors of this article intend to analyze this book to explain the satire techniques in it. The aim of this research is to explain the role that comedy plays in the explanation of and solving social problems and to measure the success of Sa’ dani. The results of this research demonstrate that Sa’ dani, with his powerful writing and great knowledge, has managed to express critical issues in creating irony through language techniques and reversal of values. Another point is that although both of these novels talk about the surprise of the oriental man in his confrontation with Western civilization, the satirical expression of the problems of the East and, in particular, the Arab society by Sa’ dani shows that he neither accepts nor rejects al-Hakim’ s view of the East, but Hakim, who first is of a non-material world view, changes his view and, like Sa’ dani, comes to adopt a material perspective toward the East.

Abbasid era is the golden time for the appearance of Iranian customs in Arabic culture and literature; the poets who were of Iranian origins or were familiar with Iranian civilization talked about Persian customs and traditions in their works. These references can lead researches to learn more about some Iranian rituals which have disappeared throughout the history. There are few literary scholars in this period who are not affected by Persian culture and customs. Abu Nuwas is among the poets who not only transformed the old Arabic poetic themes based on Iranian teachings but also mentions the old customs and traditions of his time in his divan. In five verses, he mentions drinking wine “ on red rose” . In this study, the writer tries to demonstrate what he means by the phrase “ on red rose” by arguing that it is a reference to “ Shadgoli” (literal translation: happy with flowers) which is an Iranian tradition mingled with rose and wine and which, in Old Persian literature, is mentioned as “ Golafshani. ” As there is no trace of “ Shadgoli” in old or contemporary Persian works, this paper primarily tries to introduce this tradition with the help of old Arabic references and then review and reread the aforementioned verses. Moreover, with the aim of clarifying the tradition of “ Shadgoli, ” the sanctity of red rose and the reasons behind it are discussed. The signs of holiness of red rose in Iranian religious references as well as the tales, beliefs, and folklore of pre-and post– Islam eras are surveyed. It should be noted that besides “ Golafshani, ” another tradition linked to “ Shadgoli” is the “ celebration of roses” which is mentioned in Persian works. This tradition is pointed out by Abu Rayhan Al-Biruni in the fifth century and, six centuries later, is observed by Pietro Della Valle during his trip to Isfahan and is described in his writings.

Prison literature is one of the branches of lyric literature. The contents of prison literature, which is generally written in verse, include complaints about cruelty, bitterness of times, suffering separation from family, country, and loved ones, tightness and darkness of prison cells, prison guards’ mistreatment, and expression of innocence and disappointment with the future. Employing a descriptive-analytic approach based on library research method of gathering data, this study analyzes and compares prison poems of two contemporary Arab and Iranian poets, namely Ahmed Sahnoun and Mohammad-Taqi Bahar. In addition to religious and cultural similarities, they spent a part of their lives in prison due to political activities and wrote some prison poems. Sahnoun’ scollection Hesad al-Sajn includes twenty-seven prison poems and Bahar’ s Prison Report includes twenty-eight. Both of these works are considered as valuable documents of their lifetime. The findings of this comparative research, which is done in order to introduce and reveal some hidden parts of the literature of the countries of Algeria and Iran, indicate the similarity of the prison poems of these poets as they both, in terms of content, discuss common topics such as describing the atmosphere of prison, expression of innocence, complaining about time, asking for patience, and remembering friends, and, in terms of style, adopt common features including comic and symbolic language, usage of traditional poetic meters, and allusion to Koranic verses and Hadith. The main difference between the poems is their attitude toward imprisonment conditions. Bahar depicts the physical atmosphere of prison more precisely and sometimes uses vulgar words, indicating the intensity of his grief and anger and finally tries to set himself free by writing an apology. On the contrary, while expressing his innocence and grief for imprisonment, Sahnoun asks himself to have more patience and never turns to writing an apology or using vulgar language.

Storytelling is one of the important and practical tactics employed in the Koran to convey meanings and concepts. The present article adopts discourse semio-semantics, which is considered as a new approach and which provides the possibility of systematic analysis and evaluation of texts, to make a contribution to this process of conveying Koranic meanings and terms. The story of Dhul-Qarnayn in the Koran, an important didactic story which depicts one of the important idols who played a role in humanity’ s world, has the potential to be studied from a semio-semantic perspective. The Koran introduces Dhul-Qarnayn by describing his three journeys. There are sixteen verses in the eighteenth chapter (sū rat) of the Koran, i. e. “ The Cave” (Al-Kahf), about his personality and actions. Therefore, the writer seeks to discover the discourse process governing this story in order to provide a plan for the process of production of and formulating meaning in the story. The findings suggest that the dominant discourse of the story, especially in his third journey which is made to build a dam, is action-based. Action function has an important role in the narrative process of the story and action atmosphere controls the process of meaning production. Activists, by gaining power during an action process, are released from meaning crisis and go from the negative status of disconnection from security to the positive status of connection to security. Moreover during this process they succeed in taking over the value object which they had lost due to an external force. Furthermore, Dhul-Qarnayn’ s all three journeys are driven by his superego since they are made to the farthest places in order to create a space to take humanity to perfection. This behavior originates from his monotheistic view, which is his fundamental belief and is rooted in his essence, and conveys the ethic process to the reader.

Undoubtedly, in the history of Islam, there are traces of eulogy of the prophet Mohammad in the poetry and prose masterpieces written by Muslim and non-Muslim literary scholars at different times and places. Among the remnant prose works from the golden age of Arabic literature in Andalusia, there are prominent samples of eulogy of the prophet, too. One of these eulogies is the ode (qasida) Shaghratisi’ s Lamia which is written by the Andalusian poet, literary scholar, and jurist Abdullah ibn Yahya Shaghratisi who had a keen interest in poetry but has written prose works as well. In his famous work Lamia he has borrowed from Islamic verses and narrations and none of the issues raised in the poem are devoid of reference to Islamic history. In this ode of one hundred thirty-three verses, he portrays the prophet’ s lifestyle, battles, and miracles. One of the merits of this eulogy is that, in contrast to other eulogies of that agewhich serve other poetic purposes, all verses of it are replete with rhetorical figures depicting different personal and social aspects of the prophet’ s life. Interestingly, this poem, unlike other poems composed in eulogy of the Prophet in the last centuries, is bereft of any verse that directly expresses the prophet’ s prophecy. The question that needs to be answered is that what thematic element is Shaghratisi’ s Lamia centered on. Therefore, in this study, the main purpose is to do a deductive and statistical analysis of Shaghratisi’ s poem to define the main essence of the themes of the poem and to detect its most frequent thematic element. Considering the importance of the prophet’ s battles in supporting Islam and spreading its message, this issue is expected to be the most frequent in this poem. This gives Shaghratisi’ s poem an epic quality which exhilarates the reader.

The signification of meaning by terms in poetry, in a way, resembles the conventional system of language in that each term signifies its own signified meaning. This is the symbolic and conscious aspect of language which enables poetry to convey its message to the reader. In fact, language, to some extent, maintains its communicational aspect in poetry. On the other hand, due to the unconscious quality of poetry and the overcoming of ambiguity over it, and also because of the influence of music on it, the number of poetic meanings increases, its function of communication is undermined, new relationships are created between the meanings of terms, and a new semantic system is created which increases poetry’ s power to stimulate sensations and makes its psychological impact more authentic. This process gives poetry an emotional identity and prevents poetry from being a formal communicational medium which merely conveys its desired meanings. The present study, which is based on the explanation and analysis of contemporary Arab critics’ opinions, aims to explain the true nature of poetry and provide a clear picture of its unique power in expressing meaning along with arousing emotions in the reader— a quality which makes poetry similar to music— in order to demonstrate that imposing meanings and concepts on the reader is in contrast with the real essence of poetry and that there is a constant divide between poetry and logical texts in terms of concepts and in that poetry refuses to make use of direct forms of expression. The meanings of poetry in its desirable and ideal form cannot be received directly; they have to be perceived in a “ semantic” system and are the result of contemplation on the context of the poem as well as the correspondence of the reader’ s mental space and the poet’ s intellectual environment.

There is no doubt that most of post-Islamic Iranian ancient literature, either in Persian or Arabic, is still in the form of manuscripts which have not been corrected. Even those corrected and translated into Arabic have not yet been translated into Persian. Hence an Iranian reader who is unfamiliar with Arabic will not have the opportunity to enjoy this legacy of literature. One of these works, whose correction dates back to more than half a century ago and reflects the thoughts of a great Iranian figure, Sahib ibn Abbad, is Rooznamejeh. This book is of immense value because, firstly, the writer seems to be one of the first people to use this word in its current sense and secondly, it reflects the attitudes and beliefs of Sahib when he was aged around twenty and had not yet entered the Ministry. This paper firstly focuses on the use of the word “ rooznamejeh” in ancient Arabic texts and the reason for Sahib’ s presence in Baghdad where he wrote daily notes for his teacher Ibn al-Amid. As there is no other written text about Rooznamejeh except for Mohammed Hassan al-Yassin’ s brief introduction, the paper then studies al-Yassin’ s correction of this book and the parts he has not included in his correction. To do so it is necessary to answer two questions: Has al-Yassin referred to all the written accounts, books, etc. on Rooznamejeh in his correction? What groups and circles had Sahib mostly met on his journey to Baghdad, and why? Due to his interest in Mu’ tazila and scientific and literary debates and circles, Sahib mostly met the fuqahā and Sufis of Baghdad. Since the book’ s author seems to have travelled to Baghdad only once, we can conclude that all the accounts of his meetings with the people of Baghdad are the lost parts of his Rooznamejeh.