al-Adab al-Jahili fi Athar al-Darisin Qadiman wa Hadithan
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al-Adab al-Jahili fi Athar al-Darisin Qadiman wa Hadithan (Pre-Islamic Literature in the Works of Classical and Modern Scholars) is a bibliographical and critical study by Afif Abd al-Rahman examining the history of scholarship and critical approaches applied to pre-Islamic Arabic literature .
Background and Scope
The work developed out of Abd al-Rahman's earlier publication, al-Maktaba al-Jahiliyya, which he found insufficient in scope due to the proliferation of modern studies and its limited coverage of the analytical nature of those writings . Intended initially as an article surveying methodological approaches to pre-Islamic poetry, the material expanded into a full-length book . Rather than offering an exhaustive chronicle of every critical work, the book focuses specifically on studies that adopted defined methodological frameworks and applied them to pre-Islamic poetic texts .
Method and Critical Approaches
Abd al-Rahman designed the study descriptively without personally evaluating or judging the validity of the various critical schools, aiming instead to let each method present its core features and leaving comparison and evaluation to the reader . He identifies two broad modern tendencies in the study of pre-Islamic poetry: an objective inductive approach and a symbolic interpretive approach . While acknowledging that Western Orientalist scholarship on the subject was extensive and pioneering, he notes that it requires critical screening and discussion, as parts of it contain prejudice or inaccuracies .
Structure and Contents
The book is organized into several thematic sections covering classical scholarship, Western Orientalism, and contemporary Arab criticism :
- Classical and Modern Foundations: Surveys the efforts of classical Arab scholars, Orientalist contributions, studies in English, and pre-Islamic poetry in modern Arab research, along with university scholarship .
- Literary Corpus and Publications: Surveys poetic anthologies (diwans), monographs, and research published across academic periodicals, followed by a synthesis of modern studies .
- Modern Methodological Schools: Explores specific theoretical frameworks applied to pre-Islamic texts, namely the mythological, structuralist, sociological, psychological, and integrative methods, followed by other miscellaneous studies .
- Analyzed Texts and Index: Concludes with an inventory of the poetic texts examined across the surveyed scholarship and a general subject index .
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