The Lebanese Zajal: A Structural Critique or a Cultural Critique? Zain Shaib and Mohammed Al-Mustafa as Examples

Abstract

Structural criticism or cultural criticism? A problematic title par excellence for broader research than the limits of short or easy investigations, and this research paper delves into a renewed field in terms of the readability of poetic text, or popular literary discourse, and the reason for this renewal is reality in the transformations that occurred in the textual analytical view, especially in light of the growing features of the study On the reality of modern literary criticism. There is no doubt that “structuralism” is a deep method that led to a completely qualitative shift in terms of rereading the literary product in a renewed manner based on structural features in the building, provided that it coincides with moral positions in the implications of these structures. This line is paralleled and complemented by the "cultural" approach, which is one of the modern theories that are popular and palatable, and tireless attempts are made to consolidate and clarify cultural mechanisms. This approach starts in reading the literary product from the popular ground where customs, traditions and values, and how these social dyes affect the reality of literary products, and our choice of the Lebanese zajal, which is poetry spoken in the colloquial language, is nothing but a proof of this cultural approach and its usefulness in the positive, purposeful analysis that serves the ideological About its deep goals, and the launch was from two authentic blogs on the Lebanese historical and cultural reality, and they are among the founders of this Zajal art, the two poets: Zain Shuaib and Muhammad Al-Mustafa. The work focused on proving the novelty of the cultural approach and its capabilities, which revealed goals and intentional dimensions in verbal structures, which “structuralism” may not be able to discover.