Joseph and His Two Wives: Patterns of Cultural Accommodation in the Judæo-Persian Tale of Yusof and Zoleykhā

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-195
Author(s):  
Julia Rubanovich
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Cultural Accommodation ◽  
Cultural Sphere ◽  
Book Of Genesis

Abstract The Tale of Yusof and Zoleykhā appears as part of a religious epic poem, the Bereshit-nāma (Book of Genesis), by the fourteenth-century Judæo-Persian poet Shāhin. Composed in 1358–59, in classical Persian with an admixture of Hebraisms and written in Hebrew characters, this tale was enormously popular within Persian-speaking Jewish communities and was frequently copied on its own. The paper focuses on two episodes from this story: Yusof’s marriages to Zoleykhā and to Osnat (Asenath). Shāhin was active in the late Il-khanid and early post-Mongol periods, when new forms of patronage of literary and artistic production emerged seeking to blend different cultural worlds. The poet indeed fashioned unique amalgams of Jewish and Perso-Islamic traditions, both in form and content. The two episodes constitute small case studies for exploring Shāhin’s diverse array of sources and for determining the thematic and structural ramifications of this fusion. The paper pinpoints how Shāhin accommodated and adapted Jewish and Islamic materials and demonstrates that, though Jewish, the poet firmly ensconces himself in a Persianate cultural sphere.

scholarly journals The Jewish communities of Safed and Jerusalem during the fourteenth century

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
MICHAEL EHRLICH
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
European Origin ◽  
Western European

Abstract In this article I suggest that, although many Jews perished during the wars between the Mamluks and the Franks during the thirteenth century's second half, and others migrated to different Jewish communities in the Middle East and Europe, some Jews migrated to Safed, Jerusalem, and perhaps to Gaza as well. A significant number of the Jews who lived in Safed and Jerusalem during the early decades of the fourteenth century were of a Western European origin but were not newcomers from Europe. I suggest that some of these were Jews who previously lived in Acre and Tyre and migrated to Safed and Jerusalem either shortly before the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem got its coup de grâce, or afterwards.

The Establishment of the Mathematical Bookshelf of the Medieval Hebrew Scholar: Translations and Translators

1997 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 431-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony LÉvy
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Mathematical Activity ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Original Works ◽  
Wide Readership ◽  
Medieval Hebrew

The ArgumentThe major part of the mathematical “classics” in Hebrew were translated from Arabic between the second third of the thirteenth century and the first third of the fourteenth century, within the northern littoral of the western Mediterranean. This movement occurred after the original works by Abraham bar Hiyya and Abraham ibn Ezra became available to a wide readership. The translations were intended for a restricted audience — the scholarly readership involved in and dealing with the theoretical sciences. In some cases the translators themselves were professional scientists (e.g., Jacob ben Makhir); in other cases they were, so to speak, professional translators, dealing as well with philosophy, medicine, and other works in Arabic.In aketshing this portrait of the beginning of Herbrew scholarly mathematics, my aim has been to contribute to a better understanding of mathematical activity as such among Jewish communities during this period.

Some Thoughts About Genre in Old Javanese Literature

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter John Worsley
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Poetic Work

Robson in 1983 and 1988 in his reconsideration of the poetics of kakawin epics and Javanese philology drew readers’ attention to the importance of genre for the history of ancient Javanese literature. Aoyama in his study of the kakawin Sutasoma in 1992, making judicious use of Hans Jauss’s concept of “horizon of expectation”, offered the first systematic discussion of the genre of Old Javanese literary works. The present essay offers a commentary on the terms which mpu Monaguna and mpu Prapañca, authors of the thirteenth century epic kakawin Sumanasāntaka and the fourteenth century Deśawarṇana, themselves, employ to refer to the generic characteristics of their poems. Mpu Monaguna referred to his epic poem as a narrative work (kathā), written in a prakṛt, Old Javanese, and rendered in the poetic form of a kakawin and finally as a ritual act intended to enable the poet to achieve apotheosis with his tutelary deity and his poem to be the means of transforming the world, in particular to ensure the wellbeing of the readers, listeners, copyists and those who possessed copies of his poetic work. Mpu Prapañca described his Deśawarṇana differently. Also written in Old Javanese and in the poetic form of a kakawin—he refers to his work variously as a narrative work (kathā), a chronicle (śakakāla or śakābda), a praise poem (kastawan) and also as a ritual act designed to enable the author in an ecstatic state of rapture (alangö), and filled with the power and omniscience of his tutelary deity, to ensure the continued prosperity of the realm of Majapahit and to secure the rule of his king Rājasanagara. The essay considers each of these literary categories.

scholarly journals Early English meter as a way of thinking

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-65
Author(s):  
Eric Weiskott
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Geoffrey Chaucer ◽  
English Literature ◽  
William Langland ◽  
Middle English Literature ◽  
Verse Form ◽  
Early English

The second half of the fourteenth century saw a large uptick in the production of literature in English. This essay frames metrical variety and literary experimentation in the late fourteenth century as an opportunity for intellectual history. Beginning from the assumption that verse form is never incidental to the thinking it performs, the essay seeks to test Simon Jarvis’s concept of “prosody as cognition”, formulated with reference to Pope and Wordsworth, against a different literary archive.The essay is organized into three case studies introducing three kinds of metrical practice: the half-line structure in Middle English alliterative meter, the interplay between Latin and English in Piers Plowman, and final -e in Chaucer’s pentameter. The protagonists of the three case studies are the three biggest names in Middle English literature: the Gawain poet, William Langland, and Geoffrey Chaucer.

scholarly journals AI Bugs and Failures: How and Why to Render AI-Algorithms More Human?

2021 ◽  
pp. 161-179
Author(s):  
Alkim Almila Akdag Salah
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Robotics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intelligent Machines ◽  
Human Control ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
Explainable Ai ◽  
Self Driving Cars

AI systems such as self-driving cars, or autonomous lethal weapons are expected to work in a framework called ‘explainable AI’, under meaningful human control, in a fail-proof way. In this chapter, the author discusses case studies where the opposite framework will prove more beneficial: i.e. in certain contexts, such as cultural and artistic production or social robotics, AI systems might be considered humanlike if they deliberately take on human traits: to bluff, to joke, to hesitate, to be whimsical, unreliable, unpredictable, and above all to be creative. In order to uncover why we need ‘humanlike’ traits -especially bugs & failures, the chapter considers representations of intelligent machines in the imagination of popular culture, and the deeply ingrained fear of the machine as the ‘other’.

Shaping Europe's First Dance Craze – The Role of Napoleon's Grande Armée in the Dissemination of the Quadrille (1795–1815): Case Studies in Cultural Mobility from the Southern Netherlands

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-111
Author(s):  
Cornelis Vanistendael
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Constraints ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
Equal Importance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Massive Scale ◽  
Southern Netherlands ◽  
Cultural Sphere ◽  
Cultural Mobility ◽  
The Military

The first decade-and-a-half of the nineteenth century witnessed the unusually-speedy dissemination of a new dance, the quadrille, over a vast territory. The traditional channels of dissemination cannot account for this astonishing process. The circumstances of the Napoleonic wars disrupted the functioning of institutions, publishing and networks of patronage. This article proposes an alternative explanation for the rapid rise of the quadrille. It explores aspects of the military culture of Napoleon's army to account for the veritable dance ‘craze’ associated with the quadrille. During winter campaigns, French forces organized dance lessons on a massive scale. They encouraged peer-to-peer tutoring. Moreover, the organisation of Napoleon's army allowed the formation of networks that were unaffected by the social constraints acting on appropriation processes in civil society. The process is a fine demonstration of the concept of cultural mobility. Although the question of the dissemination of the waltz is of equal importance during the era under study, it will not be addressed here. The origins of the waltz lie in a more distant past and concern a different cultural sphere. The case of the quadrille is a broad European phenomenon. To get a hold on it, this article focuses on case studies from the Southern Netherlands and the principality of Liège, a territory which approximates to contemporary Belgium

Courtliness and its Trujamanes: Manufacturing Chivalric Imagery across the Castilian–Grenadine Frontier

2008 ◽  
Vol 14 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 219-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosa María Rodríguez Porto
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
Cultural Formation ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
Cultural Plurality

AbstractThe comparative analysis of the "Hall of Justice" ceilings and several fourteenth-century Castilian courtly artefacts—above all, the Crónica Troyana de Alfonso XI (escorial, h.i.6)—provides suggestive insights for thinking about the threads of meaning associated with chivalric imagery in medieval Castile and Granada. Moreover, tracing the different modes of "Iberization" of a repertoire of motifs traditionally considered "northern" or "western," in both thematic and formal terms, as they are incorporated into the ethnic and cultural plurality of the Iberian Peninsula will serve as an opportunity for scholarship to re-examine the processes of cultural formation, allowing us to avoid simplistic labels and rigid parameters. Translation as a paradigm for artistic creation can be useful in this task, since it can help us to make sense, not only of the singularity of Hispanic achievements, but also of the tensions perceivable in the Peninsular dynamics of artistic production.

scholarly journals Three Italian Illuminated Cuttings in the Royal Library of Copenhagen: the Master B. F., Attavante and the Master of Montepulciano Gradual I

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Eleonora Mattia
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
History Of Collecting ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Catalogue Raisonne

Eleonora Mattia: Three Italian illuminated Cuttings in the Royal Library of Copenhagen Some observations on the history of collecting illuminated cuttings serve to introduce three unpublished Italian fragments that are part of a collection of illuminated fragments conserved in the Royal Danish Library. The miniatures are described from the point of view of their liturgical and art-historical content and are presented in the form of entries in a catalogue raisonné. The Master B. F., who grew up under the shadow of Leonardo de Vinci, was among those miniaturists most sought-after by collectors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century because of his evident stylistic debts to the great painter. The beautiful miniature in Copenhagen can now be added to the other known works of this Master and is critical not only to the reconstruction of his corpus, but also for the history of collecting, as it comes from the prestigious Holford Collection. It was already correctly attributed when it entered the collection of the Royal Library; it is here inserted into the activity of the artist, a dating is proposed, and a provenance is suggested from the series of choir books in the monastery of Santi Angelo e Nicolò a Villanova Sillaro in Lombardy, which were broken up around 1799. The Danish cutting here attributed to Attavante has a specific iconography that demonstrates an originality and an independence from models followed by contemporary Florentine painting, qualities not always acknowledged to the well known miniaturist whose extensive figurative production has sometimes been considered repetitive. A third fragment is here attributed to the Pisan Master of Montepulciano Gradual I. This anonymous miniaturist is at the centre of the most recent and innovative studies of fourteenth-century Tuscan painting: his activity belongs to the diversified texture of artistic production between Florence and its nearby cities, with expressive modalities independent of the tradition of the more strictly Giottesque masters. The miniature attributed to him here is to be added to the catalogue of his works, dispersed as they are in many European and American collections.

The Begims of the Mystic Feast: Turco-Mongol Tradition in the Mughal Harem

2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Balabanlilar
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Active Participation ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Marked Contrast ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
Cultural Accommodation ◽  
Royal Courts ◽  
Vital Component ◽  
Political Success

The founders of India's Mughal Empire were the last surviving remnants of the Timurid-Mongol ruling elite, descendants of Timur and Chingis Khan, for whom the traditions and institutions of Central Asia were universally recognized and potent symbols of cultural prowess and legitimacy. These ideas and understandings were not abandoned in the dynasty's displacement and reestablishment in India. Among them remained a distinctly Timurid understanding of the rights and roles of elite women—not only with regard to their artistic production or patronage but also, in marked contrast to their contemporaries the Ottomans and Safavids, the power offered to young, even childless, royal women and their active participation in dynastic survival and political success. In generations of Mughal rule on the Subcontinent, the comfortable cultural accommodation of independent elite women was a vital component of the Timurid cultural and social legacy, inherited and carefully maintained at the royal courts of India.

Experts and Connoisseurs

Reputation ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 195-215
Author(s):  
Gloria Origgi
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Value Judgments ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Domain ◽  
Cultural Sphere ◽  
Wine Market ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Way

This chapter includes case studies of the way reputations are built in the wine market. It explains that wine provides a paradigm for the role played by reputation in introducing novices to a new domain of taste. It observes adult novices in encountering for the first time a new cultural sphere that requires them to make value judgments. By restricting the discussion of newcomers to adults, the chapter avoids the kind of biases associated with deference to intellectual authority in the education of children. Adults being schooled for the first time in the world of wines find themselves facing a cultural domain strongly structured by landmarks about which they initially know nothing.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document