1. Modernist Poetry in Arabic

2. T.S Eliot
Poetry has primarily to do with the expression of feeling and emotion;… these… are best expressed in the common language of the people – that is, the language common to all classes: the structure, the rhythm, the sound, the idiom of a language express the personality of the people which speaks it.

3. Arab Poetic Modernity
Resulted from two major forces: 1. The influence of western modernist movement. 2. The state of Arabic poetry at the mid point of the 20th C.

4. Darwin : Theory of “The Origin of Species” challenged religious belief
the Cultural events that are regarded as “the intellectual basis of modernism” in Europe
The idea of death and rebirth in the literary mind
Darwin : Theory of “The Origin of Species” challenged religious belief
Freud: Conflict between nature and culture
Marx: Exploitative nature of capitalist society
Nietzsche: God is Dead - Superman

5. Arab Poetic Modernity
Modern Poetry achieved only after decades of experimentation
Moved from one major school to another
1. Arab Avant Gard in Egypt and North America
2. Arab Romanticism (Modern Poetry)
3. . Symbolism: Arab Symbolists (Said Aql’s: al Majdaliyyah 1957)
4. Early Experiment in form ( Abu Shadi: free verse, several metere, poetry-in prose)
5. Surrealist experiment

6. The Modernist period: 1948
1. Pioneer phase (Fifties + sixsties, 2. Chaotic phase of the seventies) 3. Present Phase