'Abdulqāhir al-Jurjānī's Approach to the Rhetoric A Comparison between His Views and Modern Theorists

Various researches have been carried out regarding the concept of rhetoric, literary criticism and the orderly theory developed by 'Abdulqāhir al-Jurjānī. Little work has been done however, concerning the comparison of the rhetorical elements developed by 'Abdulqāhir al-Jurjānī with those of others especially the western thinkers. The purpose of this paper is to make a comparison between the rhetoric as suggested by al-Jurjānī and the views of two famous western rhetoric specialists, i.e. Burke and Bakhtin. Using Persian and foreign sources, the views of these two thinkers were first analyzed and then compared with al-Jurjānī's and the similar and different points were later determined. It was concluded that the developments happening in western rhetoric which has caused a new era in rhetoric has a lot in common with al-Jurjānī's views which were suggested many centuries ago.