Rhetoric has been of great importance in philosophy, criticism and literature since
Aristotle, through the Golden Age of Arabic studies and down to modern literary trends. Rhetoric is
tightly bound with literary texts in all their manifestations and artistic, literary and analytic gradations.
There are three aspects of rhetoric in every literary text of whatever type. One of these has to do with
content, that is, with the author's ability to convince the receiver by alternately addressing his mind
through logic and proofs and his heart by arousing in him feelings of desire and dread. This aspect of
rhetoric is know in Arabic as Ê¿ilm al-bayÄn (rhetoric in the strict sense). Another aspect concerns style,
that is, a writer's ability to manipulate words and create novel linguistic modes through the use of
metaphors, similes and other devices, which in Arabic is called ʿilm al-badīʿ ("the science of
metaphors and good style"). The third aspect concerns form, that is, the text's structure, its forms and
icons. This is known as al-balÄgha al-baá¹£riyya ("visual eloquence"). Although there are various distinct
types of balÄgha ("eloquence, good style, rhetoric in the general sense"), they all have one purpose,
namely to affect the receiver in some way. The present study focuses on the manifestations of visual
rhetoric in visual Arabic poetry and on the way literary criticism has dealt with it. Visual poetry as it is
known in the literary sciences refers to those aspects of poetry which go beyond language and
content, such as a poems basic form and external structure. These manifestations of rhetoric are
derived from the relationship between form and content in order to generate meaning and affect the
reader. The present study will focus on the manifestations of visual rhetoric in Arabic visual poetry and
their evolution from the Mamluk period down to the digital age.
KEYWORDS: Visual Rhetoric. Visual Poetry. Digital Poetry. Digital
