International Journal of Language & Literature

Aljurjani Revisited: Creativity Explained through the Theory of Nazm (Construction)
Fahad Alqurashi

Abstract
This paper introduces the medieval philologist and rhetorician Abdulqaher Aljurjani (died 1078 AD) and provides an orientation to his views and how he distinguished himself from the then-prevailing linguistic, literary, and rhetorical trends that tried to explain and analyze the concept of creativity. Those trends maintained that inimitability of the Holy Qur‟an stems from its unparalleled aesthetic qualities of words and meanings. Aljurjani elaborated and systematized his views in the theory of Nazm (Construction) where he attributed the inimitability of the Holy Qur‟an to its specific stylistic and grammatical prototypical features rather than to its individual lexical items or their meanings. He introduced an adequate analysis of both syntactic and semantic functions of the constituents of discourse and, hence, would lead to a better understanding and explanation of the Qura‟nic text. Aljurjani hypothesized that exploring the fundamental elements of any piece of discourse is necessary to discover the basic linguistic properties and structural characteristics that can contribute to its degree of creativity. Accordingly, interpreting why the Qura‟nic text is creative and explaining its aspects of inimitability as the highest level of discourse cannot be achieved without, on the one hand, examining its linguistic properties that distinguish it from other forms of discourse and, on the other hand, studying poetry, as a creative level of discourse that can provide the tools with which the Qura‟nic creativity can be defined and analyzed.

Full Text: PDF      DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v5n2a5