Ibn Qutaybah al-Dinuri's Critical Measures and Statements of Judgement

Abstract

This research presents Ibn Qutaybah al-Dinuri's efforts in establishing literary standards and critical terms and the issues of ancient and modern in literature, as well as lexical items and meaning, and the indication of the critical judgement terms for the critic's stance on poetry from objective points of view such as linguistic and phonological aspects, and following the way of the ancients as to the division of the poem, the effect of the quantity and quality on the poets ranking, and general taste. The research shows that Ibn Qutaybah was creative and influenced the critics who came after him. The research concludes that Ibn Qutaybah was creative in terms of establishing, organizing, and systematicaly criticizing poetry, especially in controlling the terms and sections of the poem. Nevertheles, Ibn Qutaybah did not directly address the issue of influence, artistic image and imagination, and this may be due to the temporal stage, the nature of Arab poetry in most cases that abounds in realistic descriptions, and his imagination is close to the nature of Arab life. Keywords: Criticism, Critical term, Quality, poor quality, Standard, pronunciation, Meaning