The Anxiety of Champion Poets in Satirizing Women (up to the end the 3rd Century): Motivations and themes of satire

Abstract

Amatory is a well-known theme of Arabic poetry in which woman is depicted as an exemplar of sensual perfection. In this paper I investigate texts which contradict amatory in classical Arabic poetry up to the end of the 3rd hijri century. I focus on those which satirize a given woman, and exclude the texts in which the gender of women as a whole is satirized. I hypothesize that the main motivation for this type of poetry is what I call: “the Anxiety of the champion poets”. I analyze its multiple physiological stimulus in an attempt to understand the justification of the unexpected satire of women who is usually either spoken about in love or guarded but not satirized! I then analyze the satirical motifs to assess their semantics and whether they contradict amatory and panegyric and whether they correspond to satire of men or not. I aim also to situate this type of poetry with the Arabic poetry generally and to assess whether it amounts to a phenomenon. I use several critical methods in this paper including: physiological, thematic and cultural.