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Edinburgh Studies in Modern Arabic Literature

The Arabic Prose PoemPoetic Theory and Practice

By Huda J. Fakhreddine

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About this book

Examines one of the most controversial poetic forms in Arabic: the Arabic prose poem
  • Examines the ‘new genre’ of the prose poem as a poetic practice and as a critical lens
  • Adopts a case-study approach to a number of poets, including: Adonis, Muhammad al-Maghut, Salim Barakat, Mahmoud Darwish and Wadi‘ Saʿadeh
  • Adopts a comparative approach across time periods, genres, identity and cultural traditions

The Arabic prose poem gave rise to a profound, contentious and continuing debate about Arabic poetry: its definition, its limits and its relation to its readers. Huda J. Fakhreddine examines the history of the prose poem, its claims of autonomy and distance from its socio-political context, and the anxiety and scandal it generated.

When the modernist movement in Arabic poetry was launched in the 1940s, it threatened to blur the distinctions between poetry and everything else. The Arabic prose poem is probably the most subversive and extreme manifestation of this blurring. It is often described as an oxymoron, a non-genre, an anti-genre, a miracle and even a conspiracy.

Reviews

There is no doubt that this study will be invaluable for students and scholars whose works and interests directly engage with the Arabic prose poem in particular and Arabic poetry in general.
Huda Fakhreddine has given us a splendid apologia of modern Arabic poetry’s decisive step into the future. Her impeccable critical voice brims with validating avant-garde conviction as she reveals the fascinating drama of a series of tensing manifestos of a new Arabic poetic modernism. The Arabic Prose Poem will remain as a milestone in Arabic literary critical studies.
Fakhreddine’s study provides a unique and thought-provoking insight into an eminently important chapter of Arabic literature. [...] The book is essential reading for anyone concerned with modern Arabic literary history and culture.
In Arabic poetry, the recent turn to the prose poem is more than a merely generic choice.　 It is, as Huda Fahkreddine so convincingly argues, a way of opening a new space where poetic and extra-poetic imperatives are able to intersect. From the early manifestos of Adonis to the seminal poetics of Mahmoud Darwish, to the recent prose poetry of the Lebanese Wadi Sa’adeh, the Arabic prose poem is shown to be a form that challenges both traditional lyric modes as well as the non-Arabic Other. Anglophone readers have much to learn from this groundbreaking study.
Table of contents
Introduction; 1. Precursors, Terms, and Manifestos between Theory and Practice; 2. The Prose Poem and the Arabic Tradition; 3. Adonis: Writing Where the World Begins and Begins Again; 4. Muhammad al-Maghut and Poetic Detachment; 5. Mahmoud Darwish as Middleman; 6. Salim Barakat: Poetry as Linguistic Conquest; 7. Wadīʿ Saʿāda and the Third Generation of Prose Poets; Afterword; Bibliography.
About the author

Huda J. Fakhreddine

Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Author of Metapoetics in the Arabic Tradition (Brill, 2015).

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