Aspects of Innovation in the Arabic Poem (A Comparative Study)

Abstract

The Arabic poem has taken numerous directions since the earliest stages of its emergence, taking shape in accordance with the spirit of its age and the products of its culture, for poetry is the tongue of nations and the register of peoples' history. There is no doubt that change was a necessity imposed by the needs of the Arabs across their various historical stages, since expression of the issues and events of the time must be commensurate with its culture. The Arabic poem has adopted various paths in which change appeared inevitable, owing to social, historical, and political causes. The nature of renewal in the Arabic poem was not confined to its traditional form, but rather transcended that to encompass the poetic essence and content, thereby moving through the window of time from the familiar form of its earliest stages to the image to which the Arab fusion with Western culture contributed a substantial share, transforming the poem into a framework replete with symbols, images, and metaphorical structures of semantic dimensions that run deep in liberating the intentions of discourse. This is what the present study addresses here.