Mannerism in Arabic Poetry: A Structural Analysis of Selected Texts (3rd Century AH/9th Century AD – 5th Century AH/11th Century AD) (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization) - Hardcover

Sperl, Stefan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521354854 ISBN 13: 9780521354851

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1989

Synopsis

This book attempts to identify elements of mannerism and classicism in medieval Arabic poetry. Mannerism in Arabic has usually been linked with the appearance of an ornate rhetorical style called badi which became characteristic of poetry and prose from the fifth century AH/ninth century AD onwards. This study, however, is not so much concerned with the discussion of rhetorical devices as manifest in selected passages and individual lines of poetry; rather, it seeks to attain its objective through a structuralist analysis of complete poems. After the formulation of a hypothesis on the structural coherence of a cardinal form of poetic expression, the panegyric, structuralist analyses of selected poems from the medieval era follow, and the final chapter describes mannerism and classicism as contrasting styles in which the individual poem relates in fundamentally different ways to the literary convention from which it arises and the subject matter it portrays.

About this title

Book Description

This book attempts to identify elements of mannerism and classicism in medieval Arabic poetry. Instead of focusing on rhetorical devices, as is conventional in such studies, the author carries out a structuralist analysis of complete poems.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521354854
• ISBN 13: 9780521354851
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240