The World in a Book

The World in a Book

Author: Elias Muhanna

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-05-28

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 069119145X

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Based on the author's dissertation (doctoral)-- Harvard University, 2012.


Reader in al-Jahiz

Reader in al-Jahiz

Author: Thomas Hefter

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2014-05-16

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0748692754

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Explores the intricately crafted rhetorical strategies used by al-Jahiz in his letters The 9th-century essayist, theologian and encyclopedist 'Amr b. Bahr al-Jahiz has long been acknowledged as a master of early Arabic prose writing. Many of his most engaging writings were clearly intended for a broad readership but were presented as letters to individuals. Despite the importance and quantity of these letters, surprisingly little academic notice has been paid to them. Now, Thomas Hefter takes a new approach in interpreting some of al-Jahiz's 'epistolary monographs'. By focusing on the varying ways in which he wrote to the addressee, Hefter shows how al-Jahiz shaped his conversations on the page in order to guide (or manipulate) his actual readers and encourage them to engage with his complex materials.


Power, Marginality, and the Body in Medieval Islam

Power, Marginality, and the Body in Medieval Islam

Author: Fedwa Malti-Douglas

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-04-19

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 100055774X

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From rulers to uninvited guests, from women to thieves, from dreams to names, from blindness to torture - in a series of ground-breaking studies, Power, Marginality, and the Body in Medieval Islam explores the multi-layered and complex textual universe of medieval Islam. The power of the ruler sits alongside the power of the trickster, as games of detection and verbal erudition are displayed for the edification of the reader. Humour is not lacking either as male and female characters indulge in various forms of wit that redefine and recast the sacred. For much of this world, the body reigns supreme: not only in illness and miracle cures but in displays of transgression and torture. Covering the range of literature from sacred text to history, biography and anecdote, this book provides a stimulating analysis of the world of medieval Islamic mentalités.


Contrariness in Classical Arabic Literature

Contrariness in Classical Arabic Literature

Author: Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-03-28

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 9004691014

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In his Beautifying the Ugly and Uglifying the Beautiful (Taḥsīn al-qabīḥ wa-taqbīḥ al-ḥasan) the prolific anthologist al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1038) offers a thematically arranged selection of Arabic poems and prose anecdotes or sayings with contrary or paradoxical purport, such as praise of miserliness, boredom, sickness, and death, or condemnation of generosity, intelligence, youth, and music. The book is both entertaining and informative, giving insight in premodern Arab and Islamic culture. It contains a new edition of the Arabic text and a complete English translation (the first in any language) with extensive annotation, preceded by an introduction with the necessary background of the genre.


Elements of Structural Syntax

Elements of Structural Syntax

Author: Lucien Tesnière

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2015-02-11

Total Pages: 782

ISBN-13: 9027269998

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This volume appears now finally in English, sixty years after the death of its author, Lucien Tesnière. It has been translated from the French original into German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian, and now at long last into English as well. The volume contains a comprehensive approach to the syntax of natural languages, an approach that is foundational for an entire stream in the modern study of syntax and grammar. This stream is known today as dependency grammar (DG). Drawing examples from dozens of languages, many of which he was proficient in, Tesnière presents insightful analyses of numerous phenomena of syntax. Among the highlights are the concepts of valency and head-initial vs. head-final languages. These concepts are now taken for granted by most modern theories of syntax, even by phrase structure grammars, which represent, in a sense, the opposite sort of approach to syntax from what Tesnière was advocating. Now Open Access as part of the Knowledge Unlatched 2017 Backlist Collection.


Self and Secrecy in Early Islam

Self and Secrecy in Early Islam

Author: Ruqayya Yasmine Khan

Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9781570037542

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"In this comparative analysis of the significance of keeping and revealing secrets in early Islamic culture, Ruqayya Yasmine Khan draws from a broad range of Arabo-Islamic texts to map interconnections between concepts of secrecy and identity. In early Islamic discourse, Khan maintains, individual identity is integrally linked to a psychology of secrecy and revelation - a connection of even greater importance than what is being concealed or displayed. Khan further maintains that secrecy and identity demarcate boundaries for interpersonal relations when governed by the cultural norms of discretion espoused in these texts."--BOOK JACKET.


The Structure of Morale

The Structure of Morale

Author: J. T. MacCurdy

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2018-09-03

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 1789122651

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During World War I, when Captain J. T. MacCurdy, a Canadian psychiatrist and Cornell University lecturer, was despatched on a special mission to Britain, he undertook one of the earliest studies of war neuroses. The new factor was the availability of high explosives following Nobel’s discovery of dynamite in 1867 (nitroglycerin and diatomaceous earth) and developments thereof such as trinitrotoluene (TNT) and picric acid. High explosives were a boon to the mining and the civil engineer but inflicted terrible injuries on combatants. Shell shock—or, as we would now call it, post-traumatic stress disorder—resulted from extreme experiences on the battlefield, injury, concussion, being buried alive or simply the scale of the slaughter. This book, which was first published in 1943, contains the text of lectures delivered by Dr. J. T. MacCurdy to groups of officers from the army and the auxiliary women’s services early in WWII. MacCurdy, continuing on from his findings during WWI, discusses the nature of fear, the national factors at play in the creation and sustainability of morale with reference to the Allied and Axis powers, and the significance of psychological factors in practice in an organized community. “This intelligent, objective analysis of the nature of the psychological factor in war was intended for the British soldier, but its interest and application are universal.”—Foreign Affairs


Structure and Meaning in Medieval Arabic and Persian Lyric Poetry

Structure and Meaning in Medieval Arabic and Persian Lyric Poetry

Author: Julie Meisami

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-09-02

Total Pages: 618

ISBN-13: 1135790108

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This is the first comprehensive and comparative study of compositional and stylistic techniques in medieval Arabic and Persian lyric poetry. Ranging over some seven countries, it deals with works by over thirty poets in the Islamic world from Spain to present-day Afghanistan, and examines how this rich poetic traditions exhibits both continuity and development in the use of a wide variety of compositional strategies. Discussing such topics as principles of structural organisation, the use of rhetorical figures, metaphor and images, and providing detailed analyses of a large number of poetic texts, it shows how structural and semantic features interacted to bring coherence and meaning to the individual poem. It also examines works by the indigenous critics of poetry in both Arabic and Persian, and demonstrates the critics' awareness of, and interest in, the techniques which poets employed to construct poems which were both eloquent and meaningful. Comparisons are also made with classical and medieval poetics in the west. The book will be of interest not merely to specialists in the relevant fields, but also to all those interested in pre-modern poetry and poetics.