Open AccessPoetics of Cultural Analysis: Antithetical binaries in Um?ra ibn Aq?l's ??diyya
Author(s) -
Dr.Hussain Muhamad Al-Qarni Dr.Hussain Muhamad Al-Qarni
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
maǧalaẗ ǧameʼaẗ al-malīk abdul aziz. al-adab wa al-uʼlum al-īnsaniaẗ
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1319-0989
DOI - 10.4197/art.26-2.7
Subject(s) - poetics , poetry , literature , reading (process) , arabic , cultural analysis , philosophy , epistemology , linguistics , sociology , art , anthropology
This paper examines the application of cultural analysis approach on Arabic poetry, highlighting its points of strength and weakness. It starts with a theoretical framework explaining the principles of cultural reading of literary texts and then analyses a poem by ?Um?ra, chosen because it contains an unusual amount of antithetical binaries at word level, construction and ideas. The aims of the cultural analysis in this paper is to discover the polysystems of the text, to explore the limits of this approach as well as its analytical and hermeneutical potentials and to show its shortcomings. Amongst the findings is that using antithetical binaries was a suitable technique, which served ?Um?ra's porpuse of highlighting paradoxes of his time.