When Mercy Becomes a Poetic Value:Ibrahim Tuqān's "Angels of Mercy" Metamorphosing Femininity of Service into Semantic Serenity

Abstract

This study offers a reading of Ibrahim Tuqān's poem 'Angels of Mercy' that moves critically beyond conventional rhetorical readings with an aim to explore the poem's structure and aesthetic mechanism as a modern ethical discourse that redefines mercy as a normative value. The study hypothesises that the text does not merely represent mercy as imagery but rather activates it through an integrated poetic system that mobilises metaphor, gendered representation and linguistic structure to bring about an overall ethical humanistic meaning. The study adopts an interpretive analytical methodology which incorporates the analysis of aesthetic structure with an examination of the value-representation function of stylistic elements, with a focus on three principal dimensions: how metaphor is transformed from a decorative device into a normative structure; how femininity is reconfigured from a caregiving perspective beyond the conventional binaries of romantic love and motherhood; and how semantic serenity is generated through syntactic simplicity and rhythmic rigour. The findings prove that the poem's central metaphor plays an interactive ethical role and that the way nurses are represented reframes women's roles within a caregiving social horizon, far beyond traditional stereotypes. The study further shows that linguistic economy and lexical calmness contribute further to the construction of 'serenity' not as an affective outcome but as a semantic value that arises from harmony between form and content. The study concludes that Tuqān's poem constitutes an early example of poetic integration of aesthetics and ethics in modern Arab poetry, shifting values from heroic bravado to a quieter human-centred ethic, and reflecting a qualitative interpretation of aesthetics and ethics within modern Arabic poetic discourse.