SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This thesis contains eleven chapters; introduction, nine chapters on various aspects of the Kitab Al-Tarbi Wal-Tadwir of Jahiz, and conclusion. The Arabic text referred to is Charles Pellat's edition (Damas, 1955), which has been photocopied and added as appendix. The Introduction discusses the form known as adab, and Chapter One deals with Jahiz's version of it in this risala. Using syntagmatic analyses, and the identification of registers of discourse, an overall coherent texture is postulated. Chapters Two and Three analyse the structure of passages of direct discourse, worded either by question or by report. Syntactic patterns are compared, as are semic fields, in an approach which will be followed throughout the thesis. Chapters Four and Five isolate sections identified as indirect discourse, as argumentation presented through the problems of language. Chapters Six, Seven, and Eight deal with the intrusion of recipient, author, and text, and postulate a sophisticated literary function for these elements. In Chapter Nine, on the basis of the primary identifications, the textual interdependence of discourse registers is treated by comparison with that in other literary forms, both ancient and modern. In the Conclusion, based on the re-assembling of elements isolated in the analyses of Chapters One to Eight, the function and raison d'etre of this particular form is presented as a hypothesis about its relationship to expression of paradigmatic change.