Risible Rhymes

Nonfiction, History, Middle East, Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism
Cover of the book Risible Rhymes by Humphrey Davies, Muhammad ibn Mahfuz al-Sanhuri, NYU Press
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Author: Humphrey Davies, Muhammad ibn Mahfuz al-Sanhuri ISBN: 9781479857524
Publisher: NYU Press Publication: October 4, 2016
Imprint: NYU Press Language: English
Author: Humphrey Davies, Muhammad ibn Mahfuz al-Sanhuri
ISBN: 9781479857524
Publisher: NYU Press
Publication: October 4, 2016
Imprint: NYU Press
Language: English

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.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

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.

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