Arabic Literature and Rhetoric
Arabic Literature and Rhetoric tests literary periods, genres, and balāgha. Expect pre-Islamic poetry, Qur'anic style, Abbasid prose, maqāma, nahḍa, free verse, and figures of speech.
Core rules
- ʿIlm al-maʿānī concerns syntax and context; ʿilm al-bayān concerns simile, metaphor, and metonymy; ʿilm al-badīʿ concerns embellishment.
- Tashbīh compares explicitly; istiʿāra transfers a term by deleting one side of the comparison.
- Istiʿāra muṣarraḥa keeps the borrowed term and deletes the original subject; istiʿāra makniyya keeps the original and implies the borrowed term.
- Rhymed prose (sajʿ) is not the same as poetic meter (ʿarūḍ).
Worked example
In the line raʾaytu asadan yarmī, the speaker did not see a literal lion. The predicate yarmī is the qarīna that blocks literalism. The brave man is deleted and the lion retained, so the figure is istiʿāra muṣarraḥa. If the line said zaydun asadun, it would be tashbīh bāligh, because both sides are stated without a particle.
Traps
Do not label every comparison istiʿāra. Do not ignore the qarīna that determines metaphor. Do not confuse sajʿ with meter. Do not analyze a line without checking the lexical meaning first.