Abstract:
This paper presents some general guidelines about the concept of reception in the literary and critical Arabic tradition. Its basic premise stems from the writers and critics awareness of the importance of the receptive public in the Arabic discourse. Thus, our concern is on the limitation of this awareness through highlighting the critic’s methodological sensitivity. Despite the fact that these critics interest were not mainly concerned with the theory of reception as is the case in modern literary studies, especially among the Germans, the Arabs dealt with the receptive reader and showed his centrality in their literary essays. No wonder then that the focus of their concern was upon the concepts of poetry, rhetoric and their functional relationship with the receptive reader. Subsequently, they were pushed to believe in the necessity of the artist’ s care about the expectations of the reading public (receivers) and about his engagement vis-à-vis the laws of poetry and the traditions of reception. So, no matter how different were the contexts of the dealt with reception in the present or past, it is certain the ancient Arabs were not far from the theoretical and the practical Implications in this regard.
