Stylistics of Abu Nowas Ascetic Poems based on Structural and Lingual Approaches

This article is about one of the Arab poetic school’s prominent poets in the field of literary creations and rebellious innovations against the ancient heritage of Arab literature which is one of the two major vanguards, considering the modern movement in Abbasid era. Hassan bin Hani, titled as Abu Nowas, left his birthplace, Ahwaz, and dwelled in Iraq instead. He was an innovative modern poet under the influence of common social and political currents of his time. Using his poetic language, he reflects the will and sensations of his nation and community. He is a literary man who revolted against ancient literary rituals of his period; a poet who is mixed with wine and lust. He is considered as one of the leaders of poets that united the sense of nationalism and sensuality. But this is not the whole story as in the last years of his life, he turned to asceticism and seclusion; wearing the clothes of fear and hope and writing poems concerning asceticism and ascetic ideas. His latest writings show Abu Nowas’ subtle truth-oriented and art-oriented soul. Therefore, this poet has been chosen to analyzehis ascetic elegies and stanzas. Applying stylistics approach, we analyzed his works in the following five different categories: phonetic, syntactic, lexical, semantic and cognitive. The results show that the poet has chosen appropriate syntactic style fitting his own melancholy regarding the phonetic field. Sometimes he has innovated new poetic styles which are structurally similar to Andalusia Stanzas. In syntactic area, his style is a mixture of indicative and creative ones reflecting poet’s ongoing internal challenge and melancholy. Lexically speaking, he uses subtle words with simple meanings without obscurity. In semantic level, he applies different figures of speech like simile, metaphor and allusion. From cognitive point of view, unity of subject and stability of thought around the axis of death-mentioning, selfreproach, vale-blaming and sincere repent is apparent in his elegies.