The Department of Rhetoric, Literary Criticism, and Comparative Literature is concerned with the study of literary texts in terms of their artistic structure, aesthetic significance, and methods of analysis, both ancient and modern. It aims to equip students with the tools of Arabic rhetoric and the keys to critical appreciation, connecting them to the rhetorical and critical heritage in a conscious and scholarly manner, and preparing them to understand the horizons of the literary text within its cultural and civilizational context.

The department comprises three integrated tracks:

– Rhetoric: The study of the sciences of Rhetoric, semantics, and figures of speech, their development in the Arabic tradition, culminating in issues of inimitability and the rhetoric of the Quran, and the analysis of literary discourse in light of the theory of arrangement and stylistics.

– Literary Criticism: Tracing the origins of Arabic criticism, its sources, and its major issues such as diction and meaning, and the pillars of poetry, while also addressing modern and contemporary critical trends and their applications to texts.

Comparative Literature: This department studies the relationship between Arabic literature and world literatures through shared cultural influences, applying methodological approaches to various literary genres.

The department aims to graduate researchers and critics equipped with the tools of in-depth analysis, sophisticated rhetorical understanding, and comparative perspective, enabling them to contribute effectively to the literary, cultural, and research landscape.