Translating the Muslim for Christian Europe: Re-assessing the Interpretation of aslama in the First Latin Translation of the Qur’an

Michael Pollitt

doi:10.1080/09596410.2021.2014692

Utopia’s Moorish Inspiration: Thomas More’s Reading of Ibn Ṭufayl

Renaissance and Reformation ◽

10.33137/rr.v41i3.31536 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 41 (3) ◽

Author(s):

Daniel Regnier

Keyword(s):

Twelfth Century ◽

The Self ◽

Latin Translation ◽

Thomas More ◽

Philosophical Novel ◽

Ibn Tufayl

A promising but neglected precedent for Thomas More’s Utopia is to be found in Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān. This twelfth-century Andalusian philosophical novel describing the self-education and enlightenment of a feral child on an island, while certainly a precedent for the European Bildungsroman, also arguably qualifies as a utopian text. It is possible that More had access to Pico de la Mirandola’s Latin translation of Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān. This study consists of a review of historical and philological evidence that More may have read Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān and a comparative reading of More’s and Ṭufayl’s two famous works. I argue that there are good reasons to see in Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān a source for More’s Utopia and that in certain respects we can read More’s Utopia as a response to Ṭufayl’s novel. L’Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān d’Ibn Ṭufayl consiste en un précédent incontournable mais négligé à l’Utopie de More. Ce récit philosophique andalou du douzième siècle décrivant l’auto-formation et l’éveil d’un enfant sauvage sur une île peut être considéré comme un texte utopique, bien qu’il soit certainement un précédent pour le Bildungsroman européen. Thomas More pourrait avoir lu l’Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān, puisqu’il a pu avoir accès à la traduction latine qu’en a fait Pic de la Miradolle. Cette étude examine les données historiques et philologiques permettant de poser que More a probablement lu cet ouvrage, et propose une lecture comparée de l’Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān et de l’Utopie de More. On y avance qu’il y a non seulement de bonnes raisons de considérer l’Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān d’Ibn Ṭufayl comme une source de l’Utopie de More, mais qu’il est aussi possible à certains égards de lire l’Utopie comme une réponse à l’Ibn Ḥayy Yaqẓān.

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King Lear and its Origins

10.1093/oso/9780198793755.003.0004 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

John Kerrigan

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

King Lear ◽

Latin Translation ◽

Desire For Death ◽

History Play ◽

Oedipus At Colonus

The agreed, major sources of King Lear are the anonymous history play King Leir and Sidney’s Arcadia. To these and other early modern ‘originals’ this chapter adds classical tragedies by Seneca, Euripides, and Sophocles—most conspicuously his Oedipus at Colonus, which was readily available in Latin translation. The ancient tragedies resonate with King Lear thanks to conventions of literary imitation that were well understood in the Jacobean period, but their presence is also symptomatic of a drive within the play to get back to the origins of nature, injustice, and causation. The influences of Plutarch and Montaigne are also highlighted. The portrayal of death (or the illusion of it) and the desire for death, in the play and its sources, are analysed. Focusing on the scenes at Dover Cliff and the division of the kingdom/s, this chapter moves to a new account of the complications of the play’s conclusion in both quarto and Folio texts.

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SOME NOTES ON THE ‘NEW APULEIUS’

The Classical Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0009838820000816 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-6

Author(s):

Lukas J. Dorfbauer

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Latin Translation ◽

Latin Text ◽

The Third ◽

Editio Princeps

In 2016 Justin Stover published an important editio princeps of a fragmentarily preserved text that was originally discovered by Raymond Klibansky in the first half of the twentieth century: a kind of Summarium librorum Platonis which Klibansky took as a Latin translation of a lost Greek original, whereas Stover argues it was written by Apuleius, namely as the third book of his De Platone. The following notes deal primarily with details pertaining to the constitution of the text, but I will start with one remark on a detail of Stover's translation and close with a discussion concerning the alleged medieval reception of the so-called ‘New Apuleius’. Chapters, pages, Latin text, apparatus criticus entries, and translations are quoted according to Stover's edition; all bold highlights are mine, as are all translations from works other than the ‘New Apuleius’ if not indicated otherwise.

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Beautiful Surfaces

Nuncius ◽

10.1163/18253911-03102001 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 31 (2) ◽

pp. 251-287

Author(s):

Eleanor Chan

Keyword(s):

Rene Descartes ◽

Latin Translation ◽

Daunting Task ◽

René Descartes ◽

Critical Interpretation

The assumption that the Cartesian bête-machine is the invention of René Descartes (1596–1650) is rarely contested. Close examination of Descartes’ texts proves that this is a concept founded not on the basis of his own writings, but a subsequent critical interpretation, which developed and began to dominate his work after his death. Descartes’ Treatise on Man, published posthumously in two rival editions, Florentius Schuyl’s Latin translation De Homine (1662), and Claude Clerselier’s Traité de l’ homme, has proved particularly problematic. The surviving manuscript copies of the Treatise on Man left no illustrations, leaving both editors the daunting task of producing a set of images to accompany and clarify the fragmented text. In this intriguing case, the images can be seen to have spoken louder than the text which they illustrated. This paper assesses Schuyl’s choice to represent Descartes’ Man in a highly stylized manner, without superimposing Clerselier’s intentions onto De Homine.

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