PERSIAN AND ARABIC THEORIES OF LITERATURE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF AL-SAKKAKI'S 'MIFTAH AL-'ULUM' AND SHAMS-I QAYS' 'AL-MU'JAM'

This study is a comparison of an Arabic and a Persian text on literary study from thirteenth century Khwarazm; the Arabic text is al-Sakkak(')i's Miftah al-('c)Ulum, and the Persian text is Shams-i Qays' al-Mu('c)jam fi Ma'ay(')ir Ash'ar al-'Ajam. I discuss here both authors' methods of literary analysis and what these methods reveal about each author's conception of literature. I link the variation in approach to the fact that al-Sakkak(')i and Shams-i Qays discuss literature in terms of different literary traditions; Shams-i Qays considers Persian court poetry, while al-Sakkak(')i considers Koran and Arabic poetry. The thesis has five chapters: chapter one discusses the concepts of criticism and literary study and describes the context of literary criticism in the medieval Islamic world; chapter two compares the overall arrangement of the two works, paying particular attention to the authors' method of presentation; chapter three compares both authors' discussion of figures of speech, which is a main subject in most works of criticism in the middle ages; chapter four compares each text's formulation of aesthetics and program for explicating a literary text; chapter five examines the place of each work in their respective intellectual traditions.