In this paper I would like to present a general overview of the emergence of early modern Arabic literary criticism. There are three fields where the discourse on literary criticism develops. These are: the burgeoning cultural journal market, where critique or intiqād is presented as a necessary concept; journal articles by lay literati who compared European and Arab literary works and ideas; and in the field of academic literary comparison, where scholars established the foundations of literary criticism in the modern sense. These developments will be surveyed paying close attention to the internalisation of the decline thesis or inḥiṭāṭ. As the paper will demonstrate the indigenisation and assimilation of intiqād involved an epistemic shift from traditional to modern ways of knowing literature. The thinkers discussed developed their ideas about literary criticism through a manipulation of the lafẓ/ma’na pair from traditional Arabic literary criticism. The motivation for doing so was a desire to cast literature as socially and politically useful, and to move away from what they believed was a stagnant and excessively formalistic literary heritage. The paper will conclude with the inauguration of literary criticism as an academic discipline in 1910 at the Egyptian University. The central role played by intiqād in this epistemic shift will be highlighted throughout, as will be the coloniality embedded in the European models and ideas these thinkers sought to emulate.

Majāz is a rich concept in classical Arabic thought. Its meaning ranges from interpretation to figurative expression (Heinrichs). It encompasses, but is a greater category than, istiʿāra (metaphor). It entails some sense of crossing over or expanding the apparent meaning. The concept was flexible enough for authors to apply it to a range of literary and expressive features, including semiotic and syntactical components of linguistic expression. Although the technical meaning of majāz is standardized by the 13th century in ʿilm al-balāgha (the science of eloquence) to refer to specific kinds of figurative expression, it is a term that is used to describe all kinds of linguistic and literary transgressions beyond this technical meaning. These transgressions are said to always be more beautiful than saying something plainly. Because they go beyond the surface meaning, I argue, they require interpretation. This characteristic, in turn, is a crucial aspect of what renders majāz eloquent and beautiful. Overviews of majāz in modern scholarship tend to focus on its meaning as trope or figurative speech, then highlight exceptions to this technical meaning. By looking at premodern Arabic works of literary theory, Quranic hermeneutics, and adab, this paper seeks to expose a unified concept of majāz as “transgression that requires interpretation,” which applies to individual words, sentences, and even stories. This approach is important as it highlights aesthetic features common to all levels of transgression that are otherwise not apparent. Furthermore, building on the work of Alexander Key and Avigail Noy, the paper will consider the implications of this argument on the relationship between majāz and ḥaqīqa, exposing salient aspects of the conception of literary representation in classical Arabic thought.

Within the focus of the panel on research projects between America, Europe and the Arab world that attempt to re-theorize Arabic literature using its own terminology, the paper examines the practice of ikhtiyār. As a way of operating, an attitude or a tendency, ikhtiyār allows us to think of qualities in relation to an era or a culture, to a community, in ways that are not specific to one cultural-historical period. Yet, it remains largely informed by the ethical implication knowledge sharing claims in premodern Arabic thought. This paper approaches ikhtiyār as a site for epistemic intervention, and charts in how it yokes scholarly practices to democratic attitudes, distinct conceptualization of knowledge.

After Introducing my new project which is a living handbook on historical literary concepts in Arabic and their translation (KALiMaT), I will interrogate the historical term adab in its foundational period to revisit our modern understanding of literature. I will begin this paper with some critical remarks on what I call a literary history of concepts. I suggest that literary history should focus on the dynamic modes of interpretation within and between works and texts, taking into account the material, social, and discursive boundaries of textual production. Secondly, a literary conceptual history does not examine literature as a predefined concept but takes the concept of literature itself as the main object of examination. The central Arabic term that inevitably emerges in this regard is adab with its inexhaustible richness of facets and historical variability, as several recent publications have shown. I will discuss some of these recent contributions and translations of adab and then explain my argument that, despite the obvious diachronic polysemy, adab was a very clear-cut matter for authors of the 2nd and 3rd centuries AH, which is usually considered the founding period of Arabic literature. Just ‘like death, adab is indispensable,’ writes Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ in his famous preface to Kalīla and Dimna. And Ibn Qutayba, in his ʿUyūn al-akhbār (The Essential Accounts), considers the ‘acquisition of adab’ (taʾaddub) the essential asset for his fellow scribes and administrators. Both authors emphasize the necessity to combine adab with reason (ʿaql) in several of their writings, pointing to a particular kind of relationship between theory and practice. In these writings, as I will finally argue, adab is a core ethical concept, a kind of meta-knowledge, that offers the possibility to ascribe transformative, existential, and transcendental dimensions to literature.