Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- Dedication
- 1 The Foundations of Letter-Writing in Pre-Modern Islamic Society
- 2 Epistolary Prose, Poetry and Oratory: Essentials of the Debate
- 3 The Power of the Pen and the Primacy of Script
- 4 The Composition Secretary (i): Background and Status
- 5 The Composition Secretary (ii): Moral and Inner Qualities
- 6 Balāġa, Epistolary Structure and Style
- 7 Epistolary Protocol
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Balāġa, Epistolary Structure and Style
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- Dedication
- 1 The Foundations of Letter-Writing in Pre-Modern Islamic Society
- 2 Epistolary Prose, Poetry and Oratory: Essentials of the Debate
- 3 The Power of the Pen and the Primacy of Script
- 4 The Composition Secretary (i): Background and Status
- 5 The Composition Secretary (ii): Moral and Inner Qualities
- 6 Balāġa, Epistolary Structure and Style
- 7 Epistolary Protocol
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Know that since the craft of writing is founded on following the ways of eloquence and imitating the customary practice of balāġa, and since these sciences [that is to say, ma‘ānī/bayān/badī‘] are the foundation of the pillars of eloquence and the cornerstone of balāġa, then the secretary must know them
This chapter will focus on of some of the precepts of balāġa (communicative eloquence), especially those of bayān (clarity of expression) that are particularly important to epistolography and the structure of letter-writing. It is beyond the scope of this present study to analyse exhaustively the way in which the vast array of tropes and literary devices available to the secretary are used in the epistolary genre. However, I have identified a small number of devices that seemed to draw the attention of the most prominent literary critics, such as Ibn al-Aṯīr and al-Askarī, and which reflected some of the unique structural and stylistic requirements of letter-writing. These devices will form the basis of the discussion in this chapter.
Before evaluating these precepts I would like to comment on the rather complex issue of why in this work I have decided not to translate balāġa as ‘rhetoric’, as it has often been translated by scholars of the Arabic language and literary tradition. The focus on meaning in the Arabic tradition, and the etymological sense of ‘to reach the objective’ in the verb balaġa/yabluġu led me to select a different translation for balāġa.
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- Information
- The Culture of Letter-Writing in Pre-Modern Islamic Society , pp. 131 - 165Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2008