Details

Subject(s)

• Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn 915 or 916-965—Criticism and interpretation [Browse]
• Sayf al-Dawlah al-Ḥamdānī, ʻAlī ibn ʻAbd Allāh 916-967—In literature [Browse]

Series

• Studies in Arabic literature ; v. 14. [More in this series]
• Studies in Arabic literature, 0169-9903 ; v. 14 [More in this series]

Contains

Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, 915 or 916-965. Poems. Selections. [Browse]

Summary note

The purpose of this study is to identify and describe recurrent patterns of composition in the twenty two major panegyrics Mutanabbi wrote to Sayf al-Dawla during his stay at the Hamdanid court in Aleppo between 337/948 and 345/956. It discusses the types of utterance used in endings and in cadential lines before definable internal boundaries, the organising conventions of the passages that lead into and out of chronicles of military campaigns, the non-random placement of certain crescendo motifs, various means of local organisation in poems without events, etc. It also considers brief differences in technique between the Aleppo period and Mutanabbi's earlier and later work, and casts a glance at possible predecessors. Based on a sizable and coherent sample of poetry, this study demonstrates that compositional rules and predilections played a pervasive role in Mutanabbi's writing in the years when his career was at its height.

Notes

Arabic texts of Mutanabbī's panegyrical poems: p. 87-125.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references (p. [126]-127) and index.

Contents

• Ch. 1. Endings. A. Invocations, optatives, etc. B. Gnomic statements. C. Conditionals. D. An expanded sample
• Ch. 2. Getting to the chronicle. A. Simple summaries. B. Extended summaries. C. Bridges to the theme. D. Other cases
• Ch. 3. Cadence. A. Cadence before the onset of the chronicle. B. Cadence before "poet, prince and rivals" C. Cadence before hija. D. Cadence before less rigorously defined seams. Excursus: The placement of isocola
• Ch. 4. From chronicle to closure. A. Disengagement from the particular. B. Crescendo motifs in the coda. C. The particular against the expanded background
• Ch. 5. Local structures in poems without events. A. Text Four. B. Text Three
• Ch. 6. A note on Text Eight
• Ch. 7. A glance at the earlier and later work. A. Before Aleppo. B. After Aleppo
• Ch. 8. A predecessor
• Appendix One: Some diagrams
• Appendix Two: Cadential occurrences of conditional sentences beginning with in, idha, and law
• Appendix Three: The texts.

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ISBN

• 9004093664 ((cloth))
• 9789004093669 ((cloth))

LCCN

90025142

OCLC

22813148

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