Contemporary Arab Poet's Innovation in Applying the Prophet's Religious Stories

Religious heritage in all its forms and for all nations is considered as one of the most important sources of poetic inspiration. Poets, in many of their literary works, have benefited from their religious heritage significantly; meanwhile the holy prophets are one of the most widely used religious symbols. In symbolic application of prophets’ personalities, poets highlight the salient features of their life such as the passions of Jesus Christ (PBUH) and the patience of Job (PBUH) while referring to these religious figures, they use them as a means to explain and interpret poets’ own lives in contemporary era. However, sometimes the contemporary Arab poets, while using accepted and known symbols, resort to deconstructing the symbolic application of religious figures and utilize unusual forms as the highest occurrence of such innovations can be observed in Jesus Christ (PBUH), as well as in Job (PBUH), Moses (PBUH), Adam (PBUH), and Noah (PBUH)’s stories. By using a descriptive-analytic approach in a complete and precise study of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, Nazik al-Malaika, Fadawi Tawqan, Mahmoud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim, AmalDanghal andNizar Qabbani’s diwans and by using all the extracted examples, this paper aims to analyze the innovations in applying prophets’ religious personalities.