Legendary Criticism through "Our Old Poetry and New Criticism”’s Wahb Aroumia

Abstract

This study aims at focusing on the critic Wahb Roumieh and his publication “Our Old Poetry and the New Criticism”, in which he presented a new vision in applying the mythological approach to pre-Islamic poetry and displayed the Arab critics to this approach. Basically, this criticism began in the West, then gradually moved to the Arabs through critics who applied it to Arabic literature, such as: Ali Al-Batal, Ahmed Kamal Zaki, Nusrat Abdel-Rahman. Hence, Ahmed Roumieh followed their path, presented their ideas, then proceeded them with his vision. This latter had been shaped after his presentation of ancient poetry. Then, he dealt with the mechanisms of this approach, such as: manifestation, compliance, after defining, explaining, and then, applying them to his poetic texts. Besides, Wahb Ahmed Roumieh mentions some legendary stories and events through which he confirmed the existence of the legend. The study reveals that Wahb Rumiyyah tried to give a new analysis to our ancient poetry by applying the legendary approach.