A Glance on Abd al-Qahir Jurjani's Psychological Criticism Approach (on the Basis of "Asrar al-Balaghah (The Secrets of Elucidation)")

At the beginning of 20th century, Psychology got a special status in contemporary criticism (or critical approaches) through the theories of Freud and Jung. Literary works were being criticized by such approaches on the basis of the text sender (author or poet), after a while, with the rise of other psychological schools – such as Gestalt- they started to be criticized on the basis of their influences on the reader(or audience), from which some of contemporary Arab critiques inspired. In present paper, the author is to recognize if there is any trace of such criticism in the works of Abd al-Qahir Jurjani, the rhetoric scholar and great critique? And if there was any, how would it be? Has modern criticism, particularly its psychological approach, been under its influence? In his two works, Asrar al-Balaghah (The Secrets of Elucidation) and Dalail al-Ijaz (Intimations of Inimitability), Jurjani had pointed both of these psychological methods of critisism out. He looks the subject from the point of text influence on the audience in Asrar al-Balaghah and has stated remarkable matters about each of similes and metaphors that can be considered as a base for western schools of literary criticism. Present study has been conducted through a descriptive-analytic method on the basis of library resources.