Publisher's Synopsis
Representing the most sustained investigation of the aesthetics of Anti-Colonialism in modern Arabic poetry, this book chronicles the evolution of a distinct poetics that sought to maintain the integrity of the qasidah without circumventing its historical moment. It painstakingly analyses a selection of odes by four leading twentieth-century poets, Ahmad Shawqi, Ma?ruf al-Rusafi, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and ?Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati. It will be of particular interest to scholars and students of Arabic literature, Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, Postcolonial studies, Comparative literature, and Cultural studies.