Abstract

Simple and complex issue is one of the most important dual issues of literary criticism that forms a great portion of ancient Arabic literary criticism. There have been offered multiple definitions of simple and complex by critics, and subsequently, in the new era of literature, many studies have been conducted by scholars on this issue. These studies tried to explain and analyze the views of each of the old critics, which itself, indicates the importance of research on this matter. The relationship between the purpose and content of poetry and the effect of historical trends on the development of simple and complex concepts and even complex itself, is one of the topics that critics have not written comprehensive works on. This study has dealt with the effect of historical period, people’s opinion and the development of society in restricting each of these two, i.e. simple and complex concepts. The impressibility from logical opinions that the connection and discourse of civilizations has been the main cause in acknowledging the existence of complex poetry, the relationship between the purpose and content of the poem and the simple and complex poem has also been considered in this study. This article seeks to take a different look at Al-Jahiz, Ibn Qutaybah and Ibn Rashiq views on the simple and complex issue, based on descriptive-analytical research method. In this research, the researcher gathers the evidence of examples related to the simple and complex issues in the presence of each of the three critics and analyzes and explains them based on a critical view. Among the important results of this research, it can be pointed out that the historical period, people’s opinion and the development of the critical society have had an important effect on restricting and refining the meaning of terms like simple and complex. This impact was in such a way that the impresibility from logical opinions that was the result of union of civilizations and played a significant role in the acceptance of complex poem and its beauty, became evident. Another result of this research is that the content and purpose of the poem is one of the important topics that is directly related to the simple and complex issues.