Essay
كتاب البديع
Not translated into English
Ibn al-Mu'tazz · 887
Synopsis
A treatise that catalogues the ornaments of poets' language, the badīʿ. It first defines five figures: metaphor, paronomasia, antithesis, the repetition at the end of a verse of a word from its beginning, and the argument of logical form. It then adds a series of beauties of discourse, such as allusion or the elegant transition. Each figure is illustrated with examples drawn from the Qur'an, the sayings of the Prophet, prose and ancient verse, then the poets of his time.
Context
Composed in 274 AH, that is 887 or 888, when its author was twenty-seven, the treatise sets out to show that the style of the so-called modern poets, such as Bashshar ibn Burd or Abu Nuwas, was not an invention: its figures were already found in the Koran, the sayings of the Prophet and ancient poetry. For the first time, the terms in use in discussions of style were brought together within a single framework. The Arabic text was edited in London in 1935 by the Russian orientalist Ignace Kratchkovsky.
Who it is for
In Arabic, a technical treatise whose substance is made up of quotations from the Quran and the poets; no French or English translation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the first works of literary theory and criticism in Arabic, it founded the study of figures of speech that would come to be called the science of the badīʿ.
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