Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Written in mid-17th century Egypt, Risible Rhymes is a short, comic disquisition on rural verse, mocking the pretensions and absurdities of uneducated poets from Egypt s countryside. Like al-Shirbini s Brains Confounded, written some forty years later, it combines a biting satire on Egyptian rural society with a hilarious parody of the verse-and-commentary genre so beloved by scholars of the day. The two texts also share six overlapping short poems, which suggests that they emanate from a common corpus of pseudo-rural verse that circulated in Ottoman Egypt.
Nothing is known about the author, al-Sanhuri, who likely hailed from Egypt s Fayyum region, although he describes his text as having been written at the behest of an unnamed friend. Alongside the later Brains Confounded, al-Sanhuri s Risible Rhymes provides further evidence of a hitherto unrecognized genre of Arabic literature during this period, namely, mock-scholarly commentary on verse of supposedly rural provenance. Preoccupation with the countryside as a cultural, social, economic, and religious XE "religious" locus in its own right is unique in pre-twentieth-century Arabic literature. XE "literature"
Using clever literary analysis and wordplay, this mordant commentary offers readers a rare window on rural life in Ottoman-era Egypt.
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Synopsis
Written in mid-17th century Egypt, Risible Rhymes is in part a short, comic disquisition on rural verse, mocking the pretensions and absurdities of uneducated poets from Egypt s countryside. The interest in the countryside as a cultural, social, economic, and religious locus in its own right that is hinted at in this work may be unique in pre-twentieth-century Arabic literature. As such, the work provides a companion piece to its slightly younger contemporary, Yusuf al-Shirbini s Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abu Shaduf Expounded, which also takes examples of mock-rural poems and subjects them to grammatical analysis. The overlap between the two texts may indicate that they both emanate from a common corpus of pseudo-rural verse that circulated in Ottoman Egypt. Risible Rhymes also examines various kinds of puzzle poems another popular genre of the day and presents a debate between scholars over a line of verse by the tenth-century poet al-Mutanabbi. Taken as a whole, Risible Rhymes offers intriguing insight into the critical concerns of mid-Ottoman Egypt, showcasing the intense preoccupation with wordplay, grammar, and stylistics that dominated discussions of poetry in al-Sanhuri s day and shedding light on the literature of this understudied era."
Synopsis
Written in mid-17th century
Egypt, Risible Rhymes
is in part a short, comic disquisition on "rural" verse, mocking the
pretensions and absurdities of uneducated poets from Egypt's countryside.
The interest
in the countryside as a cultural, social, economic, and religious locus in
its own right that is hinted at in this work may be unique in pre-twentieth-century
Arabic literature. As such, the work provides a companion piece to its slightly
younger contemporary, Yusuf al-Shirbini's Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abu
Shaduf Expounded, which also takes examples of mock-rural poems and
subjects them to grammatical analysis. The overlap between the two texts may
indicate that they both emanate from a common corpus of pseudo-rural verse that
circulated in Ottoman Egypt.
Risible Rhymes also examines various kinds of puzzle
poems--another popular genre of the day--and presents a debate between scholars
over a line of verse by the tenth-century poet al-Mutanabbi. Taken as a whole, Risible
Rhymes offers intriguing insight into the critical concerns of mid-Ottoman
Egypt, showcasing the intense preoccupation with wordplay, grammar, and
stylistics that dominated discussions of poetry in al-Sanhuri's day and
shedding light on the literature of this understudied era.
Synopsis
Written in mid-seventeenth-century Egypt, Risible Rhymes is in part a short, comic disquisition on "rural" verse, mocking the pretensions and absurdities of uneducated poets from Egypt's countryside.
The interest in the countryside as a cultural, social, economic, and religious locus in its own right that is hinted at in this work may be unique in pre-twentieth-century Arabic literature. As such, the work provides a companion piece to its slightly younger contemporary, Yusuf al-Shirbini's Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abu Shaduf Expounded, which also takes examples of mock-rural poems and subjects them to grammatical analysis. The overlap between the two texts may indicate that they both emanate from a common corpus of pseudo-rural verse that circulated in Ottoman Egypt. Risible Rhymes also examines various kinds of puzzle poems-another popular genre of the day-and presents a debate between scholars over a line of verse by the tenth-century poet al-Mutanabbi.
Taken as a whole, Risible Rhymes offers intriguing insight into the critical concerns of mid-Ottoman Egypt, showcasing the intense preoccupation with wordplay, grammar, and stylistics that dominated discussions of poetry in al-Sanhuri's day and shedding light on the literature of this understudied era.
A bilingual Arabic-English edition.