Old Marvels, New Approaches: The Revitalization of Balāgha in Moroccan Literary Studies
EPISODE 186
Old Marvels, New Approaches: The Revitalization of Balāgha in Moroccan Literary Studies
The science of balāgha is an Arabic scholarly discipline dealing with poetics and rhetoric, one that dates back to at least the 10th century C.E. Scholars of balāgha have long studied how poets convey intellectual and emotional content to listeners by using tools such as vivid imagery, sound play, and stylistic variation. Meanwhile, the relationship between Arabic balāgha and the Greek rhetorical tradition beginning with Aristotle has always been complicated, with some thinkers seeing the Greek emphasis on persuasive oratory as a welcome addition to Arabic-Islamic ideas about the power of language and speech, and others attempting to defend the Arabic language sciences against external influence.In the 19th and 20th centuries, balāgha was often viewed by progressive writers and thinkers as anachronistic. Its study thus tended to be confined to traditional Islamic institutions and seen as relevant only to particular “premodern” Arabic-Islamic texts. But recent decades have seen a renewed dedication to the continued vitality and value of a type of balāgha study called “The New Balāgha” that draws on Greek, Arabic, and hybrid conceptual tools. For those involved in this movement, balāgha comes to name a set of ideas about how people connect through language: how they become open to new ideas, empathetic to the struggles of those around them, and sensitive to the powers of linguistic beauty and subtlety. This scholarly movement has come to be particularly associated with Morocco, and especially with Abdelmalek Essaadi University in Tetouan, where its best-known practitioner and advocate, Dr. Mohamed Mechbal, teaches.
Betty Rosen is a final-year PhD candidate in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and the Designated Emphasis Program in Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. Originally from Cleveland, OH, she earned her A.B. in Comparative Literature Magna Cum Laude from Harvard College in 2012, as well as completing an MA in Arabic Literature at SOAS (University of London) in 2013. She was also a CASA Fellow at the American University of Cairo during the 2017-18 academic year. Betty specializes in Arabic and Hebrew poetics and theories of language, both medieval and modern. Her dissertation, entitled Language Marvels: Al-Badī‘ In and Beyond Arabic-Islamic Poetics, focuses primarily on the conceptions of al-badī‘—the “marvelous creativity of language”—developed in writings by Muslim and Jewish Arabophone writers in Egypt during the Mamluk Period (13th-15th centuries). The dissertation also asks how certain 19th-century thinkers mobilized Mamluk-era ideas about language, poetics, and creativity to envision alternative forms of Arab “modernity.” Betty’s research interests also extend into the 20th and 21st centuries, particularly the ways in which contemporary Arab scholars mobilize and reimagine older ideas about the Arabic linguistic and poetic tradition. In her free time, she plays viola, writes creatively, and works on an ongoing Arabic-to-English fiction translation project.
This episode was recorded on June 22, 2023 at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM).
Recorded and edited by: Abdelbaar Mounadi Idrissi, Outreach Director, TALIM
In the 19th and 20th centuries, balāgha was often viewed by progressive writers and thinkers as anachronistic. Its study thus tended to be confined to traditional Islamic institutions and seen as relevant only to particular “premodern” Arabic-Islamic texts. But recent decades have seen a renewed dedication to the continued vitality and value of a type of balāgha study called “The New Balāgha” that draws on Greek, Arabic, and hybrid conceptual tools. For those involved in this movement, balāgha comes to name a set of ideas about how people connect through language: how they become open to new ideas, empathetic to the struggles of those around them, and sensitive to the powers of linguistic beauty and subtlety. This scholarly movement has come to be particularly associated with Morocco, and especially with Abdelmalek Essaadi University in Tetouan, where its best-known practitioner and advocate, Dr. Mohamed Mechbal, teaches.
Betty Rosen is a final-year PhD candidate in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and the Designated Emphasis Program in Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. Originally from Cleveland, OH, she earned her A.B. in Comparative Literature Magna Cum Laude from Harvard College in 2012, as well as completing an MA in Arabic Literature at SOAS (University of London) in 2013. She was also a CASA Fellow at the American University of Cairo during the 2017-18 academic year. Betty specializes in Arabic and Hebrew poetics and theories of language, both medieval and modern. Her dissertation, entitled Language Marvels: Al-Badī‘ In and Beyond Arabic-Islamic Poetics, focuses primarily on the conceptions of al-badī‘—the “marvelous creativity of language”—developed in writings by Muslim and Jewish Arabophone writers in Egypt during the Mamluk Period (13th-15th centuries). The dissertation also asks how certain 19th-century thinkers mobilized Mamluk-era ideas about language, poetics, and creativity to envision alternative forms of Arab “modernity.” Betty’s research interests also extend into the 20th and 21st centuries, particularly the ways in which contemporary Arab scholars mobilize and reimagine older ideas about the Arabic linguistic and poetic tradition. In her free time, she plays viola, writes creatively, and works on an ongoing Arabic-to-English fiction translation project.
This episode was recorded on June 22, 2023 at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM).
Recorded and edited by: Abdelbaar Mounadi Idrissi, Outreach Director, TALIM
Suggested Bibliography
Anqar, Mohamed. (1994). Banā’ al-ṣūra fī al-riwāya al-isti‘māriyya: Ṣūrat al-Maghrib fī al-riwāya al-isbāniyya[Imagistic structure in the colonial novel: The image of Morocco in Spanish fiction]. Maktabat al-idrīsī fī al-nashr wal-tawzī’.
Black, Deborah. Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy. Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science: Texts and Studies, vol. 7. Brill, 1990.
Draoui, Abdelfdil. “Al-Balāgha wa ḥudūd al-dhātiyya al-muqayyada: Naḥw balāgha insāniyya rājiḥa wa munḍabiṭa” [Rhetoric and the boundaries of subjectivity: Toward a substantial and rigorous rhetoric of the human]. Ḍad: Majallat al-lisāniyyāt al-‘arabiyya wa ādābihā, vol. 2, no. 4, October 2021, pp. 439-466.
Kibédi Varga, Aron.(2002). Rhétorique et littérature: Études de structures classiques. Klincksieck.
Mechbal, Mohamed. “Balāghat al-naṣṣ al-nathrī al-qadīm: Al-Mabādi’ wal-mukawwināt” [The rhetoric of classical prose texts: First principles and components]. Jāmi‘at Qaṭar - Kulliyyat al-adāb wal-‘ulūm - Qism al-lugha al-‘arabiyya, vol. 1, January 2017, pp. 19-49.
—-. (2017). Fī balāghat al-ḥijāj: Naḥw muqāraba balāghiyya hijājiyya li-taḥlīl al-khiṭābāt [On the rhetoric of argumentation: Toward an argumentational-rhetorical approach to discourse analysis]. Dār kunūz al-ma‘rifa lil-nashr wal-tawzī‘.
—-. (2021). Muḥāḍarāt fī al-balāgha al-jadīda [Lectures on the new rhetoric]. Dār al-Rāfidayn.
—-, editor.( 2019). Balāghat al-ṣūra: Muḥammad Anqār nāqid al-simāt wa mubdi‘ al-sard [The Rhetoric of imagery: Muḥammad Anqār as a critic of textual features and a creator of narrative]. Dār kunūz al-ma‘rifa lil-nashr wal-tawzī‘.
Perelman, Chaim and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. (1971). The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, translated by John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver. University of Notre Dame Press.
Tamine, Joëlle Gardes. (2011). Pour une nouvelle théorie des figures. Presses Universitaires de France.
Ullmann, Stephen. (1963). The Image in the Modern French Novel. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
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