The Poetic Image and its Role in the Visitor/Poet Shawqī’s Interaction with the Historical Monuments: An Analysis Study

The relationship between archaeology and language is one of the main subjects of both fields since most remains are related to humans and society. Linguists examine aspects and types of human language, such as the poetic language used in the context of recovering the past, its memories, and the referential meaning of its places. Based on the interrelation between Archaeological anthropology, language, and poetry, this study analyzes the neo-classical poet Aḥmad Shawqī's (1932) Sīnīya "Journey to Andalusia" in the light of the works of the linguist and anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep's (1957) "rites of passage" and the religious language scholar Theodore Gaster's (1992) "seasonal pattern," as employed by the critic Suzanne Stetkevych in reading the rituals of the journey in classic poetry. The study uses the descriptive method to uncover the poet's interactions with Islamic antiquities during his travels to Spain. It also shows the poet's movement, through his poetic language and images, from nostalgia to evocating the lost past Islamic remains, ending with blame to strengthening his Egyptian community's present and enlightening their future.