The fat bride and the foolish messengers: humorizing the love theme in an early Islamic poem

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Abstract

The main premise of this study is that the long poem by early Islamic poet Humayd b. Thawr al-Hillī (d. ca. 68-70/688-690) has a dual function. One is expressive and poetic-striving for elegant and affective verses mainly related to love. The other is humoristic and attempts to amuse. The poem's humor appears predominantly in the passages describing a corpulent bride, and the failure of two go-betweens to set up a meeting between lovers, with the narration of multiple love affairs further contributing to its comedy. The main objective of this study is to shed light on the use and techniques of humor in classical Arabic culture, a topic neglected in modern research.

Original languageEnglish
JournalHumor
DOIs
StateAccepted/In press - 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Ali Ahmad Hussein, published by De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2022.

Keywords

  • Arabic love poetry
  • earnest versus jest
  • General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH)
  • Humayd b. Thawr al-Hilali
  • humor
  • incongruity
  • Logical Mechanism
  • Script Opposition

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Sociology and Political Science
  • Linguistics and Language
  • Psychology (all)

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