Against Eurocentrism: decolonizing Eurocentric literary theories in the ancient Egyptian and Arabic poetics

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Abstract

The paper offers literature review of the three suggested approaches that answer the question of ancient Egyptian meter. These theories reflect the constant contradictions between the dominant European Imperial languages of the 19 century (German - French - English). The paper also investigates the religious motivations that prompt Euro-American scholars to compare ancient Egyptian with Biblical texts. The rediscovered thematic affinities formed the main objective of these studies in order to restore historical hypothesizes that approve the legitimacy of several Biblical thoughts. Moving beyond the theoretical parameters of Eurocentric modernity, this paper argues that medieval Arabic literary criticism can be used as a foundation for understanding the literary nature of ancient Egyptian literary devices in order to recognize the various internal forces of the ancient Egyptian literary reproductions. Premodern Arabic poetics, represented in the theory of balāghah (literally ‘eloquence’ and roughly ‘poetics’), can offer the ideal path to take advantage of the linguistic affinities between the two languages in the realm of literary studies.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)171-196
Number of pages26
JournalHoward Journal of Communications
Volume32
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Apr 2021

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