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Abstract

The current study aims to investigate a classical poetic text with a modern methodological reading. By “methodology,” we mean the stylistic approach. Al-Sharif al-Raḍi’s qașidah (poem) entitled “Oh! Zabiat al-Ban” (literally, in Arabic Zabiat means ‘gazelle,’ and ‘al-Ban’ is that Moringa tropical tree which has elongated capsular fruits and is considered graceful, pleasing and attractive) is abound with prominent poetic images the poet avails of from his mundane reality. The study adopts de Saussure’s stylistic approach that looks for relationships among its signifiers which is interested in examining the poetic image within the structural displacement arising from the relations between lexical units, and the semantic shift based on metaphor as a substitution. The approach stems from procedural tools and methodological mechanisms that consider the poetic image not only to draw forth the aesthetic meanings. The study concludes with a number of conclusions, including the effectiveness throughout of the Western stylistic approach in analyzing the poetic texts of a poem from the classical heritage. Then it explains how far those images are tackled analytically, insightfully and cautiously in order not to use the ordinary frozen descriptive analysis, as in traditional Arabic Rhetoric, but to use the flexible stylistic one through providing a renewed spirit within the poetic structure. Moreover, the conclusion proves the appropriateness of the poem “Oh! Zabiat al-Ban” to the modern stylistic approach, according to stylistic analyses.

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