Conclusion

Abstract

Shi‘r al-‘āmmiyya was not just an extension of the long tradition of writing popular poetry in spoken Egyptian Arabic. Rather, it was part of the movement that has brought about the most drastic changes in Arabic poetry since the formation of the canon during the seventh and eighth centuries. Canonical Arabic literature and scholarship had reserved the term shi‘r for poetry written in a particular structure, that of the classical Arabic qaṣīda (ode), and in a particular language, the loftiest level of classical Arabic. During the first half of the twentieth century, Arab poets experimented with slight variations in both of these features, but it was not until the 1950s that new movements made the real breakthrough and divorced the notion of the poetic from the dictates of a particular form or language. The first movement was one that had originated in Iraq in 1948. By the beginning of the 1950s, poets who referred to their poetry as ḥadīth, “modern” or “modernist,” were shaping the future for Arabic poetry. Modernist poets broke away from the conventions of structure in Arabic poetry, and adopted a much more liberated form, which they called taf’īla (foot), or free verse. In Egypt, partaking of the accomplishments and new ideas of modernist poets , the poets of shi‘r al-‘āmmiyya started yet another movement. Poets of this movement, led by Fu’ād Ḥaddād and Ṣalāḥ Jāhīn broke away from the Arabic conventions of exclusively using the classical or literary linguistic register for poetry, and adopted the colloquial as the register of their poetry.KeywordsArab CountryArab WorldCultural LegacyEighth CenturyArabic DialectThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.