{[Literature in Islam]}[11th April 1991]

[Redbook9:76-77][19910411:0935m]{[Literature in Islam]}[11th April 1991]

19910411.0935

[continued]

‘In literature, drama and pure fiction were not allowed* – drama because it was a representational art and fiction because it was akin to lying. Similar constraints operated against the elaboration of mythology.... Story literature was tolerated,** and the great story works of Indian origin – The Thousand and One Nights and Kalīlah wa Dimnah – were translated from the Persian, introducing secular prose into Arabic. Didactic and pious stories were used and even invented by popular preachers. Much of this folklore found its way back into enlarged editions of the Thousand and One Nights and, through it, has even influenced later history writing. Because of the ban on fictional literature, there grew a strong tendency in later literary compositions – in both poetry and prose – towards hyperbole (mubālaghah), a literary device to satisfy the need of getting away from what is starkly real without committing literal falsehood, thus [sic] often resulting in the caricature and the grotesque.

***

*{→?←**}

[Perhaps story as in history, ie believed to be a true account?]

**[See fn=* above]

***– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica 22:] 38

[Single paragraph in source & ms split between this ts entry & next]

[continued]

[PostedBlogger18for19062024]