Reveals how an aesthetic of wonder underlay the classical Arabic treatments of poetry, the Quran, and Aristotelian poetics.

Lara Harb is an Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University where she specializes in classical Arabic literary theory, and Arabic conceptions of the 'literary'. She is the author of articles in journals including Journal of American Oriental Society and Middle Eastern Literatures. Her Ph.D. was awarded the S. A. Bonebakker Prize for the best thesis in Classical Arabic Literature in 2014.

Introduction; 1. Wonder: a new paradigm; 2. Wonder in Aristotelian Arabic poetics; 3. Discovery in Bay¿n; 4. Metaphor and the aesthetics of the sign; 5. Näm, wonder, and the inimitability of the Quran; Epilogue. Fä¿¿a, bal¿gha, and poetic beauty.