Metrics of Arabic Poetry between Reservation and Innovation

Abstract

It could be argued that most of the conservatism around the Arabic poem focused on the development of metrics since the pre-Islamic era. Many studies tackled the changes that the Arabic poem has undergone as well as its manifestations in the mental and literary spheres and the extent to which it appeals to the Arab addressee. Meter is the base of the Arabic poetry that has always been used as a criterion for classifying poets and judging the good poetry. For the poetic expression to be inspiring, it has to appeal to the collective social unconsciousness. Therefore, the vision of our ancestor critics sprang from controlling rules for the poetic process that takes into consideration the factors of interactive creative process. These factors include: the creative writer, the text and the addressee. The present study tackles the following aspects of metric poetry: the model, the addressee, the debate of feeling and thought, the environment, the literary genre, the rhyme and the rhythm. It comes up with the view of predeassors and modern scholars on these terms