Poetics of Mourning and Exile in Abd Yaghūth’s Lā talūmānī, kafā al-lawmu mā biyā and “The Seafarer”: A Comparative Reading of Pre-Islamic Arabic and Old English Elegiac Poetry

Abstract

This article examines mourning and exile in the Old pre-Islamic Arabic poem Lā talūmānī, kafā al-lawmu mā biyā (“Blame me not; I bear my own reproach”) by Abd Yaghūth, and the Old English poem “The Seafarer,” which is written anonymously. Through detailed comparative analysis of the two poems, the article aims at investigating how, despite their literary, cultural and historical contexts, the two poets managed to negotiate loss, exile and identity by employing the elegy to express feelings of alienation, death and longing. By analyzing the poets’ employment of certain poetic techniques such as sound effects, voice, repetition and imagery, both poems showcase convergences and divergences in their treatment of the universal themes of mourning, exile, alienation and mortality.