Abstract
The study explores the Udhrî ghazal as a classical literary phenomenon in the Arabic poetry; and it seeks to correlate it with Plato’s theories of love in The Symposium. The issues the study raises are: history of the Udhrî love, factors leading to its emergence, impact of Islam on the Udhrî poets, and stages of the Udhrî narrative based on classical Arabic poetry and prose. The study controverts the claims associating the Udhrî ghazal with Islam due to the profound discrepancies between Islamic teachings and the practices and behaviors of the Udhrî poets. It as well reviews the theories of love Plato introduces in the Symposium for the purpose of estimating their manifestations in classical Arabic prose and impact on the Udhrî ghazal. The beginnings of Udhrî love go back to the pre-Islamic era during which poets, such as Antara Al-Absi, frequently combined the motif of chaste love with other related topics in their poems. Yet, the Udhrî ghazal flourishes in the Umayyad age during which poets tackled Udhrî love as an autonomous motif and subgenre. The study further questions the various possible factors, i.e. political, religious, environmental and social, modernists believe have led to the evolution of the Udhrî ghazal in the Islamic age and the Umayyad age.
Highlights
The study explores the literary phenomenon of the Udhrî ghazal in classical Arabic literature
This paper explores the Arab Udhrî ghazal beginning in the pre-Islamic era and flourishing during the Umayyad age; and it introduces Antara Al-Absi as an exemplary poet of the Udhrî ghazal
The study critically reviews the historical and conceptual development of the Udhrî love and questions the modernists and classicists’ views pertaining to it in an attempt to unfold the major factors leading to its emergence
Summary
The study explores the literary phenomenon of the Udhrî ghazal in classical Arabic literature. The multiple topics characterizing the pre-Islamic Udhrî poem, which usually starts with a prelude to ruins, gives an account of the poet's howdah (i.e. packsaddle) and hunting trips across the desert and digresses to praise and pride, were reduced into the motif of chaste love in the Udhrî poems of the Umayyad poets. The study finds that though the life experiences of the Udhrî poets in the pre-Islamic and Umayyad ages were similar, they produced Udhrî poetry with different semantic and thematic structures. It further assumes that Udhrî poets have drawn on the Platonic theories of the chivalric love and the androgyny of the primeval man whose back and sides formed a circle divided into two intersecting semicircles. Conceptual convergences and divergences between the Udhrî love and Platonic love remain the central focus of this study
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