al-Qiyam al-Ijtimāʻīyah wa-al-Thaqāfīyah min khilāl al-Shiʻr al-Shaʻbī al-ʻUmānī: Shuʻarāʼ Wādī Banī Khālid Namūdhajan - Saʻdī, Nāṣir ibn Sayf ibn ʻĀmir; al-Muʼtamar al-Duwalī al-Rābiʻ bi-Mālīziyā: al-Risālah al-Ḥaḍārīyah lil-Adab al-ʻUmānī (2017) (Kuwālā Lumbūr) (Kuwālā Lumbūr : Markaz Dhākirat ʻUmān, 2017)
This paper studies Omani vernacular poetry from a civilizational angle. By vernacular poetry is meant verse written in common speech or in the local dialect; although it is not bound by the rules and inflections of standard Arabic, it is bound by defined metres and is woven in one or more of the folk arts of Oman, which is to say that it can be sung to an art practised by members of Omani society. This is the form of poetry closest to the ordinary person, since it is easy to receive and requires no high linguistic culture, and since its poets belong to the same social level as their audience — so that the poems came to express the substance of their life, custom and thought. Studying and analysing it therefore illuminates the nature and substance of popular culture and affirms the presence of the ordinary person. The paper notes the distinctive plurality of Omani vernacular forms — praise, satire, love poetry, elegy, religious and national occasions, praise of the Prophet, the place of women, and the influence of nature — and takes the poets of Wadi Bani Khalid as its case study.
Permanent citation identifier: MHF-ADAB2017-013.
Conference theme (in Arabic): المحور الرابع: المعاني الحضارية والقيم الإنسانية في الأدب العُماني.
Text in Arabic; title also romanized (ALA-LC); abstract and keywords in English.
Keywords: Omani vernacular poetry; Folk culture; Wadi Bani Khalid; Social values; Oral tradition; Omani folk arts