Nāzik al-Malāʾikah
Quick Summary
Nāzik al-Malāʾikah was an influential Iraqi poet who, along with Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb, pioneered metrical experiments in Arabic poetry during the 1940s. This innovation marked a significant shift towards modernity in Arabic literature, influenced by translations of works like T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Her work contributed to a new outlook on poetic form and content, reflecting a more "committed" approach to literature that engaged with social and political issues. Arabic poetry has historically held a significant place in Arab culture, serving as a voice for communal identity, history, and aspirations.123
Ask Britannica AI about this topic
Britannica doesn't have a full article on this topic, so we've curated a list of our relevant coverage.
Arabic literatureCategories and forms…1940s, when two Iraqi poets, Nāzik al-Malāʾikah and Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb, almost simultaneously decided to abandon the system of prosody that the critical establishment had for centuries imposed as a principal method of identifying the poetic, choosing to adopt in its place a system that used variable line length and…
Read More…1940s, when two Iraqi poets, Nāzik al-Malāʾikah and Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb, almost simultaneously decided to abandon the system of prosody that the critical establishment had for centuries imposed as a principal method of identifying the poetic, choosing to adopt in its place a system that used variable line length and…
Read More
Arabic literatureModern Arabic poetry…undertaken by the Iraqi poets Nāzik al-Malāʾikah and Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb in the 1940s, combined with the translation into Arabic of the Middle Eastern segments of Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion and T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, were more aesthetically based stimuli to…
Read More…undertaken by the Iraqi poets Nāzik al-Malāʾikah and Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb in the 1940s, combined with the translation into Arabic of the Middle Eastern segments of Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion and T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, were more aesthetically based stimuli to…
Read More
Islamic artsArabic…the Iraqi poet and critic Nazik al-Malaika (died 2007), whose poems, in free but rhyming verse, gave substance to the shadow of her melancholia. Free rhythm and a colourful imagination distinguished the best poems of the younger Arabs: even when their poems did not succeed, their experimentation, their striving for…
Read More…the Iraqi poet and critic Nazik al-Malaika (died 2007), whose poems, in free but rhyming verse, gave substance to the shadow of her melancholia. Free rhythm and a colourful imagination distinguished the best poems of the younger Arabs: even when their poems did not succeed, their experimentation, their striving for…
Read More