A Theoretical Framework for Evaluation of Poetic Plagiarism Based On Al-Jurjᾱni's Theory of Nadhm and Russian Formalism

This study is an attempt to present a theoretical framework for evaluation of poetic plagiarism. The study essentially dressed on what basis plagiarism can be spotted and how appropriation can be evaluated. The study is an analytical-comparative one. The analytical section of the study proposed a method and framework for determining whether a poetic work could be marked with plagiarism, and the comparative section applied the proposed framework in practice. a brief review of the literature on poetic plagiarism in Arabic rhetorical tradition was presented. It was shown that Al-Jurjᾱni has sporadically discussed poetic plagiarism besides elaborating his ‘theory of nadhm’ and has applied a systematic method for analyzing the relationship between poems which has not received attention thereafter. Then Al-Jurjᾱni’s method was compared with the method utilized by the Russian formalists in their analysis of the historical relationship between poems. The comparison showed that the formalist approach in the 20th century used an analytical method similar to Al-Jurjᾱni’s. A new theoretical framework was proposed based on the common principles of these approaches for determining whether a poem was plagiarized. It was accordingly argued that plagiarism can be determined neither based on similarity of contents nor similarity of the common aesthetics, but rather based on the common features that the poetic works have regarding application of new aesthetics. Having proven that one poetic work was appropriated by another based on the proposed method, the was assessed to see what role the common aesthetics played in composition of each of the poetic forms since it is the aesthetics which mirrors the relationship between the poems in creation of their forms. That being the case, it was shown that a comparison of the functions carried out by the common aesthetics in formation of each poem can indicate how the former poem led to plagiarism in the latter. At the end, a comparative analysis was carried out based on the proposed method to show the different kinds of plagiarism in poetry.