Title Strategy in Al-Jawahiri’s Poetry: Royal Poems as a Model

Abstract

Modern critical studies have followed all the textual accompaniments of the produced literary text, giving significant attention to the title, particularly in poetic texts where this documentary act was absent in previous eras. This absence was due to the poet’s preoccupation with live recitation, neglecting the importance of providing this verbal prelude (the title). In fact, this act (titling a poem) was often absent even in poetic texts that were written rather than orally transmitted. Classical criticism compensated for this deficiency through poetry collectors, commentators on diwans, and text editors.  

In alignment with modern critical approaches that consider all linguistic markers accompanying the text as guiding elements for uncovering its hidden meanings, this study examines the strategy of titling in the poetry of Al-Jawahiri. It takes the "Royal" poems as a practical field of application to determine the linguistic and semantic nature of titles, the extent of their directness and implicit suggestiveness, and the type of method the poet used in crafting them. The titling methods varied: some titles were derived from a dominant linguistic element within the poem, others from an excerpt with strong presence at the poem’s opening, while some were inspired by the occasion for which the poem was composed.