The Literary –Theoretical Criticism in Sayyid Murtada’s Works

The present article provides a literary and critical view toward Sayyid Murtada through studying his books and articles. This works highlights the critical features of his literary-theoretical view. A study on Sayyid Murtada’s works reveals that his three books, Al-‘Amaali, Al-Shahaab, and Taif al-Khiyaal, include the greatest critical and literary aspects and Sayyid Murtada proposed some views about a number of the critical-literary issues and rules, based on the prevalent critical techniques of his age and through appealing to the critical and literary views of the theorists. He has a particular approach in presenting critical issues. He has presented literary-theoretical criticisms on a number of criticism subjects, such as: the nature of the poem and eloquence, criticism of the responsibilities of critics, poetic elements and meanings and the criteria for choosing poems; he has also provided some literary-theoretical criticisms in concern with a number of criticism issues, such as: theme and rheme, locution and meaning, poetic plagiarism, challenge and balance, etc. Sayyid Murtada has studied the prevalent views on criticism; at the same time he has proposed his own view concerning the principles of criticism.

Keywords: literary criticism, theoretical criticism, Sayyid Murtada, criticism subjects and issues     

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*. Ph.D. in Arabic Language and Literature, Faculty Member of Imam Sadiq ^PBUH University, Tehran, Iran