Table Of Content

ARABIC POETRY Since the late 1940s, Arabic poetry has spoken for an Arab conscience, as much as it has debated positions and ideologies, nationally and worldwide. This book tackles issues of modernity and tradition in Arabic poetry as manifested in poetic texts and criticism by poets as participants in transformation and change. Arabic Poetrystudies the poetic in its complexity as pertaining to issues of: ● Selfhood ● Individuality ● Community ● Religion ● Ideology ● Nation ● Class and ● Gender This book also studies in context, issues that have been cursorily noticed or neglected, like Shi’i poetics, Sufism, women’s poetry, and expressions of exilic consciousness. It employs current literary theory and provides comprehensive coverage of modern and postmodern poetry from the 1950s onwards. Arabic Poetry is essential reading for those with interests in Arabic culture and literature and Middle East studies. Muhsin J. al-Musawi is Professor of Middle East and Asian Studies at Columbia University and University Professor at the American University of Sharjah. He has published 24 books in English and Arabic, including Scheherazade in England and The Postcolonial Arabic Novel. He is the editor of Journal of Arabic Literature. In 2002 he received the Owais Award in literary criticism, the most prestigious nongovernmental award in the Arab world. ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN MIDDLE EASTERN LITERATURE Editors James E. Montgomery University of Cambridge Roger Allen University of Pennsylvania Philip F. Kennedy New York University Routledge Studies in Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatureis a monograph series devoted to aspects of the literatures of the Near and Middle East and North Africa, both modern and pre-modern. It is hoped that the provision of such a forum will lead to a greater emphasis on the comparative study of the literatures of this area, although studies devoted to one literary or linguistic region are warmly encouraged. It is the editors’ objective to foster the comparative and multi-disciplinary investigation of the written and oral literary products of this area. 1. SHEHERAZADE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS Eva Sallis 2. THE PALESTINIAN NOVEL Ibrahim Taha 3. OF DISHES AND DISCOURSE Geert Jan van Gelder 4. MEDIEVAL ARABIC PRAISE POETRY Beatrice Gruendler 5. MAKING THE GREAT BOOK OF SONGS Hilary Kilpatrick 6. THE NOVEL AND THE RURAL IMAGINARY IN EGYPT, 1880–1985 Samah Selim 7. IBN ABI TAHIR TAYFUR AND ARABIC WRITERLY CULTURE A ninth-century bookman in Baghdad Shawkat M. Toorawa 8. RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES IN MODERN MUSLIM AND JEWISH LITERATURES Edited by Glenda Abramson and Hilary Kilpatrick 9. ARABIC POETRY Trajectories of modernity and tradition Muhsin J. al-Musawi 10. MEDIEVAL ANDALUSIAN COURTLY CULTURE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN Three ladies and a lover Cynthia Robinson ARABIC POETRY Trajectories of modernity and tradition Muhsin J. al-Musawi First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2006 Muhsin J. al-Musawi This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. (cid:141) To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge(cid:144)s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.Ž All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0–415–76992–2 (PrintEdition) TO THE DEVOTEE AND SCHOLAR OF CLASSICAL ARABIC POETRY SUZANNE P. STETKEVYCH CONTENTS Preface xiii Acknowledgments xix A note on translation and transliteration xxi 1 Poetic trajectories: critical introduction 1 Arabic poetry in context 1 Modernism and secular ideology 9 The modernist impulse and its aftermath 22 2 The tradition–modernity nexus in Arabic poetics 30 A dynamic tradition 30 Masks 31 The surviving past 34 Recollections 38 Why precursors? 39 Translation as a modernist engagement 44 Configurational sites: classical and modern 46 Undermining poetics 48 Which tradition in the Rome conference (1961)? 54 The dialectics of tradition and modernity 56 Adnnls: the challenge of tradition 58 Modernity as a constant 60 Al-Baymtl’s tradition 64 Poetic career: Xalm.cAbd al-Xabnr 66 ix