1 - Topos: Mundus Inversus

Summary

The sheep forgets the face of its aged shepherd

The son turns against his father, and the tear-soaked loaf of bread

Tastes of ashes, and a glass eye

In a dwarf's head, denies the free light.

– ʻAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayyātī

1. INTRODUCTION

It is not rare to find a peculiar literary phenomenon or pattern in modern Arabic literature that has a rough equivalent in Western literature. Though frequently the tendency is to see the Arabic phenomenon as being inspired by its Western equivalent, one has to be careful enough not to make a hasty conclusion. Such is the case concerning the frequent representation of reality in Arabic literary texts as topsy-turvy. In Western criticism, this is known as the topos of mundus inversus (world upside down). The topos, generally, is “a commonplace appropriate for literary treatment, an intellectual theme suitable for development and modification according to the imagination of the individual author.” Originally, topoi were rhetorical concepts used in composing orations, but when rhetoric loses its original meaning and purpose, they acquire a new function and “become clichés, which can be used in any form of literature.” Ernst Robert Curtius (1886–1956), who discussed the adaptation of topoi to literary use, has illustrated this particular topos of the world upside down with one of the pieces among the Carmina Burana, a collection of Goliardic poems whose underlying theme is the Horatian carpe diem. The poem begins as follows:

Once Learning flourished, but alas!

’Tis now become a weariness.

Once it was good to understand,

But play has now the upper hand.

Now boyish brains become of age

Long before time can make them sage,

In malice too of age become,

Shut wisdom out of house and home.

In days long gone and passed away

A scholar hardly dared to say

When he had reached his ninetieth year,

“My hour of rest from toil is here.”

But now see little boys of ten

Lay down the yoke, strut out as men,

And boast themselves full masters too.