Intertextuality, Adaptation or Plagiarism: Al-Sayyab’s “Diwanu Shi’r” and Spenser’s “Amoretti I”

No matter what the impact of Spenser’s sonnet, “Amoretti I”, on Badr Shakir al-Sayyab’s poem “Diwanu Shi’r” [A Book of Verse] may be named, it is textually and thematically evident that the latter poem has derived much from the former. The affinities between the two poems transcend the simple allusion, metaphor or intertextuality to reasonably assume that al-Sayyab, who is well-versed in English poetry, has re-worked Spenser’s sonnet and dressed it in a classical Arabic form. The present study seeks to investigate al-Sayyab’s indebtedness to Spenser, the major English 16th century poet, and here lies the significance of the study as it explores an area in the poetic formation of al-Sayyab which has never been investigated before. For this end, it explores the similarities in themes, images and subject matter between the aforementioned poems, showing whether this indebtedness is a matter of intertextuality, influence, adaptation or plagiarism.