Tuesday's Read: Poetics, Politics, and Protest in Arab Theatre

Mas'ud Hamdan. Poetics, Politics, and Protest in Arab Theatre: The Bitter Cup and the Holy Rain. (Sussex Academic Press, 2006)

According to Aristotle, the earliest elements of tragedy were hymns and songs of praise (heroic verse), and the earliest elements of comedy were sarcastic words and personal mockery (iambic verse). The former emerged with those conducting the dithyramb (festive choral songs in honor of the god Dionysus), while the latter emerged from those conducting the phallic songs (cultic songs also devoted to the god of wine, fertility and the theatre). No wonder, then, that in the Arabic translation of the Poetics by Ibn Rushd, tragedy appears as "madeeh" (praise) and comedy as "hija'" (castigation). Praise and castigation are the two central trends in classical Arabic poetry (6, emphasis added).

Hoy insists that the fundamental difference between tragedy and comedy is "Tragedy is uncompromising where the contradiction between the ideal and the reality is concerned. Comedy finds its way out... By means of sundry adjustments and accommodation which have the effect of reconciling man to his human condition (Hoy 1964: 314)," cited in 7.