The ambivalent image of the city in modern Arabic poetry as possibly influenced by english romanticists : a comparative study of selected poems

Abstract EN

The city in the Arabic poetic tradition was on the whole favorable or positive, while in the European poetic tradition the image of the city was, often enough, ambivalent.

Poetic Arabic ambivalence, as found primarily in the work of Ahmad Abdul-Mu’ti Hijazi and Salah Abdul-Saboor, marks a change which may be attributed to the influence of Wordsworth and T.S.

Eliot.

Historically, the ambivalence did not prominently emerge in Arabic poetry before Arabic poets of the Apollo school translated Romantic poetry in the 1930s, and Lewis Awad translated T.S.

Eliot in the 1940s, which may suggest a possible influence.

Before the 1960s in Egypt, the typical Arabic poet expressed their love for the city as representing the homeland.

Poets exiled by the British occupation authorities spoke nostalgically of their childhood days in their home towns, and Egypt was subliminally their city.

To define our terms, the rise of the concept of the city (the Greek polis) in Europe must be examined in relation to its Arab counterpart.

This paper will focus on Wordsworth’s and Hijazi’s image of the city as a prima facie case for the validity of the putative influence suggested in the title.