Literary Criticism
hojjat rasouli; sheler ahmadi
Abstract
The prominent critic of Arabic literature of the 4th century AH, Ibn Tabataba al-Alawi, in comparison with the works of his contemporaries and predecessors, in his work Ayar al-She’r, has a distinctive way of criticizing Arabic literature. Ibn Tabataba specifically dealt with poetry as an artistic ...
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The prominent critic of Arabic literature of the 4th century AH, Ibn Tabataba al-Alawi, in comparison with the works of his contemporaries and predecessors, in his work Ayar al-She’r, has a distinctive way of criticizing Arabic literature. Ibn Tabataba specifically dealt with poetry as an artistic industry and made the structure and order of poetry the main focus of his discussion, in such a way that through his statements one can see the subtle distinction between different types of literature such as verse, prose, poetry and the different foundations of literary works. Now, since Ibn Tabataba's focus is on the poetry industry and, on the other hand, some researchers believe that the old Arabic criticism is a form-oriented criticism, we are going to show what the critical opinions of Ibn Tabataba in Ayar al-She'r are, within the framework of the principles of Russian formalism; and how much it is possible to consider Ibn Tabataba as subject to this general rule and look him as a critic with a formalist approach. Also, to what extent the evidence available in Ayar al-She’r strengthens this hypothesis, that the ancient Arabic literary criticism is formalist criticism. Therefore, in this research, the critical opinions of Ibn Tabataba in the book Ayar al-She’r were discussed based on the main characteristics of the Russian formalism approach and, through the descriptive-content analysis method. The result of the research showed that Ibn Tabataba is at the head of critics who have a formalistic approach and his critical opinions strengthen this hypothesis, that the old Arabic criticism is a formalistic criticism.
