Diwan Bashar b.Burds A Study in the Stylistic Deviation

The current research aims to study stylistic deviation; it attempts to show the relationship between both the poet and poetic language on the one hand, and grammarians’ rigid rules on the other. Poets see that they are above rules, and that the grammarian’s job is to interpret what has been said. This view separated the two sides for a long time. It remained that way until Al-Aẖfash stated that the poet may do in poetry what no one else is permitted to do.
Admitting the poet, the right to do as he/she pleases was the trend, until Ibn Jinnī criticized this view and added that following this way makes poets commit errors they can easily avoid. He sees that the poetic licence is no longer just a simple error or abnormality made by the poet. As such, grammarians have mentioned the conditions to which grammar rules could be broken in their books, with different names assigned to this phenomenon, like abnormality and rarity in past times and displacement (l’écart) in more modern times, as Dr. Tammam mentioned. Later, the term stylistic deviation, a diversion from the agreed-upon language’s rules by permission from grammarians themselves, was presented. This deviation has to have support to its claim, such as being heard from a reading, speech or an Arab dialect. Such deviation signifies a strong personality from the poet.
This research uses Ibn Burd’s poetry as a study corpus for the phenomena discussed above, as this element in his poetry was often neglected by grammarians.
We have merely discussed what was available in Ibn Burd’s poetry concerning stylistic deviation, i.e., by omission and addition with regards to diactrics, letters and words.
This paper did not investigate all the evidence for deviation, i.e. it shed light on the phenomenon more than mentioning the evidence in which the style deviation occurred.

In conclusion, we came out with important observations that were summarized in a number of points.