Takhyil: The Imaginary in Classical Arabic Poetics.

• Author: Behzadi, Lale
• Position: Book review

Takhyil: The Imaginary in Classical Arabic Poetics. Edited and translated by GEERT JAN VAN GELDER and MARLE HAMMOND. [Cambridge]: E. J. W. GIBB MEMORIAL TRUST, 2008, Pp. xv + 286. $85.

The present volume is the result of a three-year project in Arabic Poetry and Comparative Poetics at St John's College, Oxford. It consists of two parts--the first is a collection of newly translated key texts in the field of Arabic literary criticism; the second contains studies by scholars who discussed various aspects of Arabic poetics in the project's workshops.

To sum up the general impression at the beginning: the editors have succeeded in bringing together three components that usually become separated when investigating the history of Arabic literary thought. First, to provide thoroughly translated sources we can rely on; second, to analyze the terminology used by classical authors, which here means to extract the, often different, concepts of the term takhyil with regard to an author, a period of time, or a field of knowledge; and third, to link the achievements of Muslim scholars not only to the ancient schools of rhetoric but also to a broader frame of universal categories.

As for the sources, van Gelder and Hammond have translated some of the most important texts on rhetoric and literary theory into English, after discussing them with their colleagues at the above-mentioned workshops and considering the difficulty, sometimes even impossibility, of finding consistent equivalents, the terms often being employed in different senses by different authors. The texts are the following: "Treatise on Poetry" and "The Great Book of Music" by al-Farabi (d. 9.50); "The Syllogism." "Remarks and Admonitions," and "Wisdom for al-'Arudi" by Ibn Sina (d. 1034): "The Secrets of Eloquence" by 'Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani (d. ca. 1078); "Lessons in Wisdom" by Abu l-Barakat al-Baghdadi (d. after 1164); "Commentary on Aristotle's Rhetoric" by Ibn Rushd (d. 1198); "The Path of the Eloquent and the Lamp of the Lettered" by Hazim al-Qartajanni (d. 1285); and "The Resume of the Key" by al-Khatib al-Qazwini (d. 1338). The editors precede each text with some biographical data before briefly explaining what the respective scholar had in mind when using the term takhyil. The concluding bibliography gives the original sources as well as some titles for further reading, also to be found in the introduction by Wolfhart Heinrichs ("Takhyil: Make-Believe and Image Creation in Arabic Literary Theory").

The book is framed by two contributions that survey the varied meanings the term takhyil comprised in different times and treatises. In his introduction Heinrichs differentiates takhyil in five contexts, each of which he elucidates in chronological order. Philosophers used the term mostly to describe the evocation of mental representations, taking poetics as a branch of...