Structure and Meaning in Medieval Arabic and Persian Poetry: Orient Pearl (Culture and Civilization in the Middle East) PDF
Preview Structure and Meaning in Medieval Arabic and Persian Poetry: Orient Pearl (Culture and Civilization in the Middle East)
STRUCTURE AND MEANING IN MEDIEVAL ARABIC AND PERSIAN POETRY This is the first comprehensive and comparative study of compositional and stylistic techniques in medieval Arabic and Persian lyric poetry. Ranging over some seven centuries, it deals with works by over thirty poets in the Islamic world from Spain to present-day Afghanistan, and examines how this rich poetic traditionexhibitsbothcontinuityand developmentinthe use ofawide range of compositional strategies. JulieScottMeisamidiscussesawiderangeofkeytopicsincludingtheuseof rhetorical figures, metaphors and images, and the principles of structural organization within lyric poetry. She provides detailed analyses of a large number of poetic texts, to reveal how structural and semantic features interact to bring meaning to the individual poem. The book also examines works by the indigenous critics of poetry in both Arabicand Persian, and demonstrates the critics’ awareness of, and interest in, the techniques which poets employed to construct these eloquent poems. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of pre-modern poetry and poetics, and Middle Eastern literature. JulieScottMeisami,untilrecentlyLecturerinPersianattheOrientalInstitute, OxfordUniversity,haspublishedextensivelyonArabicandPersianpoetryand is the editor of Edebiyat: The Journal for Middle Eastern Literatures. CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST Series editor: Ian R. Netton University of Leeds This series studies the Middle East through the twin foci of its diverse cultures and civilizations. Comprising original monographs as well as scholarly surveys, it covers topics in the fields of Middle Eastern literature, archaeology, law, history, philosophy, science, folklore, art, architecture and language. While thereisapluralityofviews,theseriespresentsseriousscholarshipinalucidand stimulating fashion. STRUCTURE AND MEANING IN MEDIEVAL ARABIC AND PERSIAN POETRY ORIENT PEARLS Julie Scott Meisami Firstpublishedin2003 byRoutledgeCurzon 11NewFetterLane,LondonEC4P4EE SimultaneouslypublishedintheUSAandCanada byRoutledgeCurzon 29West35thStreet,NewYork,NY10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” RoutledgeCurzonisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup #2003JulieScottMeisami Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedor reproducedorutilizedinanyformorbyanyelectronic, mechanical,orothermeans,nowknownorhereafterinvented, includingphotocopyingandrecording,orinany informationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissionin writingfromthepublishers. BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData AcataloguerecordofthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Acatalogrecordforthisbookhasbeenrequested ISBN 0-203-22055-2(cid:13)(cid:10) Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-27545-4 (Adobee-ReaderFormat) ISBN0–7007–1575–4 (Print Edition) This book is dedicated to the memories of two great teachers and dear friends – Elroy J. (Roy) Bundy and Tawfiq Sayigh – who taught me poetry, and who never grudged either their time or their talk CONTENTS Preface ix 1 Introduction 1 Brief encounters 1 Grounds for comparison 5 Medieval literary theory 9 The search for unity 13 Poetry as craft 15 Theories of composition 19 2 Invention 23 Concepts of invention 23 Invention, imitation, and genre 26 Invention and genre in early Abbasid poetry 30 Invention and genre in the Persian ghazal 45 3 Disposition: The parts of the poem 55 Concepts of disposition 55 Beginnings 60 Transitions 75 Endings 90 4 Disposition: Larger structures 111 Segmentation: Proportion and balance 111 Amplification, abbreviation, and digression 130 The shape of the poem 138 vii CONTENTS 5 Disposition: The Qas¯ıda and its adaptations 144 ˙ Functions of the Nas¯ıb 144 ) Nas¯ıb and Hija¯ 155 Variations on the Qas¯ıda Form 162 ˙ 6 Disposition: Varieties of structure 190 Spatial and numerical composition 190 Other strategies: Letters, dialogues, narratives, debates 207 7 Ornamentation 244 Concepts of ornament 244 ( Ornament and structure: The five figures of bad¯ı 246 Ornament and structure: The maha¯sin al-kala¯m 269 ˙ Ornament and structure: Other figures 282 8 Ornament: Metaphor and imagery 319 Problems of metaphor 319 Imagery and poetic unity 323 Image as argument 341 The poet and the natural world 347 Earthly Paradises? 355 Esoteric imagery 388 9 Conclusion: The coherence of the poem 404 Word and image: A privileging of styles? 404 Concluding Remarks 427 Notes 431 Bibliography 478 Index 502 viii PREFACE Thisbookhasbeenalongtimeinthemaking.Itwasbegunmanyyearsago,in the context of a discourse about Arabic and Persian poetry which has since movedontoaskotherquestions,andtoquestiontheoriginalquestions.Having been begun as research into problemsof poetic structure, it has – inthe course of major upheavals, a transatlantic move, and various other pressing projects – often been relegated to the back burner, where it finally reached a point when simple rewarming would not do. Consider this, then, a rehashing; some new ingredients have been added (notably the chapters on rhetorical figures, metaphor and imagery), but many of the old ones have been retained, because I remain convinced that there is still much worth saying about them. For there is still considerable resistance to the notion that Arabic and Persian poems are not merely “coherent” in a general sense, but carefully structured. Has enough work been published to provide evidence of the principles of structural organization? Many more studies exist now than when I first began the research that would ultimately lead to this book; but they are stillsparse.Butsurely(runsanotherargument)therearemoreinterestingthings wecouldbedoing,moreimportantquestionswecouldbeasking?Indeedthere are;butuntilwehavemorethanahandfulofcriticalstudiesofindividualpoets, or of individual poems, we will not have a critical mass to work with. This is whythisparticularstudyisintendedtobeabroadone;butalthoughitmaynot provide every detail about every poet, or every poem considered (as well as aboutmanyotherpoetsandpoemsthathavenotbeendiscussedhere),itshould furnish starting points for further investigation – investigation which would both apply and test the conclusions arrived at here. No single person can read every single poem by every single poet in both Arabic and Persian – not only what is available in print, but what remains in manuscript, the study of which would require several collective lifetimes; but someone might, on reading this book, find a particular poet interesting, and go on from there. I hope so. But why study structure at all? Can’t we just assume that poems are structured, and get on with it? There are two answers to this. One, is that not everyone,evennow,assumesthatthisisthecase;theextantstudies,ingeneral, seem to waffle, assuming that there is this kind of poem, or that kind of poem, ix
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