Epic Poetry
Taghribat Bani Hilal is an Arabic epic recounting the Banu Hilal's journey from Egypt to Tunisia and conquest of the latter in the 11th century. It was declared one of mankind's Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by the UNESCO in 2003.
In the 13th century, an Arabic epic poem entitled Antar was created based on Antarah ibn Shaddad, a pre-Islamic Arabian-Abyssinian warrior-poet. In 1898 the French painter Étienne Dinet published his translation of Antar, which brought Antar bin Shaddad to European notice. It has been followed by a number of derivative works such as Diana Richmond's Antar and Abla, which furthered western exposure to the Antar bin Shaddad legends.
Read more about this topic: Arabic Epic Literature
Famous quotes containing the words epic and/or poetry:
“In an age robbed of religious symbols, going to the shops replaces going to the church.... We have a free choice, but at a price. We can win experience, but never achieve innocence. Marx knew that the epic activities of the modern world involve not lance and sword but dry goods.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)
“The base of all artistic genius is the power of conceiving humanity in a new, striking, rejoicing way, of putting a happy world of its own creation in place of the meaner world of common days, of generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, according to the choice of the imaginative intellect. In exercising this power, painting and poetry have a choice of subject almost unlimited.”
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