(9/24) Adab Colloquium: From Balāgha to ʾIntiqād: Politicising the Science of Literature in Modern Arabic Literary Though

Join us for this Adab colloquium with Dr. Haifa S. alFaisal, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at King Saud University and discussant Dr. Boutheina Khaldi, Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at the American University of Sharjah on "From Balāgha to ʾIntiqād: Politicising the Science of Literature in Modern Arabic Literary Thought.”

Any cursory account of the history of Arabic poetics will reveal that it is not reducible to stylistics and grandiloquence, as a significant number of reformist(nahdawist) literati, assume. The nahdawists were members of what is referred to as the nahḍa, or the Arab renaissance, which is a period extending from the late 18th to early 20th century in which the Arab and Islamic world fell under the influence of European colonial modernity. The misconceptions regarding balāgha are particularly notable in the writings of early modern Arab literary comparatists, whose exposure to Eurocentric literary modernity drove them to compare their own literary heritage with that of the European nations. This comparison generated the transition from balāgha to critique (naqd); from what they perceived was a defunct focus on formal rhetoric to a more modern, that is socially and politically engaged, focus on criticism, or naqd. This chapter will map the various ways in which the concept of naqd emerged to replace balāgha in the works of early modern comparatists.