scholarly journals Convergence and Divergence between the Arabic ʿUdhrî (Chaste) Love and Platonic Love: A Comparative Study

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Ahmed Thnaybat ◽  
Hussein Zeidanin
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Arabic Poetry ◽  
Platonic Love ◽  
History Of ◽  
Convergence And Divergence ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
Classical Arabic ◽  
Literary Phenomenon

The study explores the Udhrî ghazal as a classical literary phenomenon in the Arabic poetry; and it seeks to correlate it with Plato’s theories of love in The Symposium. The issues the study raises are: history of the Udhrî love, factors leading to its emergence, impact of Islam on the Udhrî poets, and stages of the Udhrî narrative based on classical Arabic poetry and prose. The study controverts the claims associating the Udhrî ghazal with Islam due to the profound discrepancies between Islamic teachings and the practices and behaviors of the Udhrî poets. It as well reviews the theories of love Plato introduces in the Symposium for the purpose of estimating their manifestations in classical Arabic prose and impact on the Udhrî ghazal. The beginnings of Udhrî love go back to the pre-Islamic era during which poets, such as Antara Al-Absi, frequently combined the motif of chaste love with other related topics in their poems. Yet, the Udhrî ghazal flourishes in the Umayyad age during which poets tackled Udhrî love as an autonomous motif and subgenre. The study further questions the various possible factors, i.e. political, religious, environmental and social, modernists believe have led to the evolution of the Udhrî ghazal in the Islamic age and the Umayyad age.   

Sky-Birds & Dead Trees On Two Images in Edmond Jabès

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasser Elhariry
Keyword(s):  
French Language ◽  
Arabic Poetry ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Dead Trees ◽  
Translational Mode ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Archive ◽  
Edmond Jabes ◽  
Classical Arabic ◽  
Late Works

Chapter 2 concerns two recurrent images from Edmond Jabès’s late works, Un étranger avec, sous le bras, un livre de petit format (1989) and Le livre de l’hospitalité (1991). While Jabès is well known within French literary circles, analyses of his early Cairene work— and to an even lesser extent the formative roles of orality and aurality from his pre- Parisian period—are few and thin. I first contextualize the figure of the Egyptian poet in relation to the history of Jabès scholarship, and then build on Tengour’s translational poetics of the classical Arabic literary archive in order to unravel a different, sublimated translational mode that links many of Jabès’s later books. In his late and final works, which he composed while living in Paris, Jabès’s poetic imaginary reprises word for word the tropes of early Arabic verse. When read together and in relation to the same archival corpus, Tengour and Jabès represent contrasting translational and intertextual modes for comparative poetic and translingual compositions in French. Through his aphasic refuge in French monolingualism following his exile from Cairo, and his late re/discovery of classical Arabic poetry in Paris, Jabès’s sublimated recourse to early Arabic verse retraces and performs the history of the old literary forms beneath a French language surface.

Collaborative Composition of Classical Arabic Poetry

Arabica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 163-206
Author(s):  
Erez Naaman
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Arabic Poetry ◽  
History Of ◽  
Composition Process ◽  
Classical Arabic

Abstract Evidence of collaborative composition of poetry goes back to the earliest documented phases in the history of Arabic literature. Already during pre-Islamic times, poets like Imruʾ al-Qays used to challenge others to complete their impromptu verse and create poetry collaboratively with them. This practice—commonly called iǧāza or tamlīṭ and essentially different from the better known poetic dueling of the naqāʾiḍ (flytings)—has shown remarkable stability and adherence to its form and dynamics in the pre-modern Arabophone world. In this article, I will discuss evidence of collaborative poetry from pre-Islamic times to the early seventh/thirteenth century, in order to present a picture of the typical situations in which it was practiced, its functions, its composition process, and formal aspects. Although usually not producing poetic masterpieces, this practice has the merit of revealing much about the processes of composing classical Arabic poetry in general. In this respect, its study and critical assessment are highly important, given the fact that medieval Arabic literary criticism does not always reflect praxis or focus on the actual practicalities of composing poetry. This practice and the contextualized way in which it was preserved allow us to see vividly the inextricable link between poetic form and the conditions in which poetry was created. It likewise sheds light on the intricate ways in which poets resisted, influenced, and manipulated others by poetic means. Based on the obvious fact that collaborative composition is imbued with the spirit of play, I offer at the end of the article criticism of Johan Huizinga’s famous play concept and his (much less famous) views of early Arabic culture and poetry in light of the evidence I studied.

Language of Paradise

2019 ◽  
pp. 395-415
Author(s):  
Jan Loop
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Semitic Languages ◽  
Arabic Poetry ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
History Of ◽  
Oriental Studies

This chapter discusses the discovery of Arabic poetry in Western Europe in the context of Protestant Arabic studies of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The piece centres on the work of the Dutch Orientalist Albert Schultens (1686–1750). His interest in Arabic poetry was driven by the idea that it preserves some of the characteristics of the primeval language and that it can help us understand the original meaning of the Hebrew texts of the Bible. The essay argues that in spite of its shortcomings, Schultens’ work is a significant moment in the history of oriental studies. It stimulated an entire generation of young scholars in Protestant Northern Europe; and his comparative study of Semitic languages, his concepts of the primeval language and its transmission as well as his great interest in the poetry of the East still resonate in early Romantic approaches to oriental poetry.

Ancient Revolutions in the Literature of Polish Romanticism

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-226
Author(s):  
Maciej Junkiert
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
European Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classical Traditions ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
Literary Reception

This article aims to examine the Polish literary reception of the French Revolution during the period of Romanticism. Its main focus is on how Polish writers displaced their more immediate experiences of revolutionary events onto a backdrop of ‘ancient revolutions’, in which revolution was described indirectly by drawing on classical traditions, particularly the history of ancient Greeks and Romans. As this classical tradition was mediated by key works of German and French thinkers, this European context is crucial for understanding the literary strategies adopted by Polish authors. Three main approaches are visible in the Polish reception, and I will illustrate them using the works of Zygmunt Krasiński (1812–1859), Juliusz Słowacki (1809–1849) and Cyprian Norwid (1821–1883). My comparative study will be restricted to four works: Krasiński's Irydion and Przedświt (Predawn), Słowacki's Agezylausz (Agesilaus) and Norwid's Quidam.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marko Geslani
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
The Comparative Study ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Indian Religion

The introduction reviews the historiographic problem of the relation between fire sacrifice (yajña) and image worship (pūjā), which have traditionally been seen as opposing ritual structures serving to undergird the distinction of “Vedic” and “Hindu.” Against such an icono- and theocentric approach, it proposes a history of the priesthood in relation to royal power, centering on the relationship between the royal chaplain (purohita) and astrologer (sāṃvatsara) as a crucial, unexplored development in early Indian religion. In order to capture these historical developments, it outlines a method for the comparative study of ritual forms over time.

Across and Down

1939 ◽  
Vol 8 (24) ◽  
pp. 129-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. P. Austin
Keyword(s):  
Lord Byron ◽  
The United States ◽  
Short Article ◽  
Crossword Puzzle ◽  
Casual Reader ◽  
History Of ◽  
Oxford Dictionary ◽  
Popular Work ◽  
Good Standard ◽  
Literary Phenomenon

The casual reader, on seeing these lines, might be forgiven for the thought that Lord Byron had the crossword puzzle in mind when he wrote them. In an uncertain world nothing is more certain than that this was not the case. Byron died in 1824. The crossword puzzle was born, at least in its popular modern shape, almost precisely a century later. Its history begins suddenly. Neither in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of 1921, nor in the twelfth edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, dated 1922, does the crossword appear at all. But from the year 1923 references to it become increasingly frequent. In 1924 a popular work entitled The Crossword Puzzle Book was published. In 1925 there was a reference to crosswords in Punch. In 1926 the thirteenth edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica had a short article on it. In 1928 the crossword puzzle was mentioned in Galsworthy's Swan Song. From that time every good standard dictionary or work of reference has included it. These facts document its emergence as a literary phenomenon in Great Britain. The history of the crossword in the United States is very similar, except that it would appear to have achieved stardom in the popular firmament a few months earlier in that country than in this.

A Melkite Arabic literary lingua franca from the second half of the first millennium

1994 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Blau
Keyword(s):  
Arabic Language ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Arabic Dialects ◽  
Modern Arabic ◽  
Classical Arabic ◽  
The Ideal

After the Islamic conquest, the Greek Orthodox, so-called Melkite ( = Royalist), church fairly early adopted Arabic as its literary language. Their intellectual centres in Syria/Palestine were Jerusalem, along with the monaster ies of Mar Sabas and Mar Chariton in Judea, Edessa and Damascus. A great many Arabic manuscripts stemming from the first millennium, some of them dated, copied at the monastery of Mar Chariton and especially at that of Mar Saba, have been discovered in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, the only monastery that has not been pillaged and set on fire by the bedouin. These manuscripts are of great importance for the history of the Arabic language. Because Christians were less devoted to the ideal of the ‘arabiyya than their Muslim contemporaries, their writings contain a great many devi ations from classical Arabic, thus enabling us to reconstruct early Neo-Arabic, the predecessor of the modern Arabic dialects, and bridge a gap of over one thousand years in the history of the Arabic language.

Le fonti, i metodi e le narrazioni della storia della videoarte in Italia negli anni Settanta

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Parola
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Video Art ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Selection For ◽  
The Many ◽  
Art And Architecture ◽  
Selection Of

This essay derives from the primary need to make order between direct and indirect sources available for the reconstruction of the history of video art in Italy in the seventies. In fact, during the researches for the Ph.D. thesis it became clear that in most cases it is difficult to define, in terms of facts, which of the different historiographies should be taken into consideration to deepen the study of video art in Italy. Beyond legitimate differences of perspectives and methods, historiographical narratives all share similar issues and narrative structure. The first intention of the essay is, therefore, to compare the different historiographic narratives on Italian video art of the seventies, verifying their genealogy, the sources used and the accuracy of the narrated facts. For the selection of the corpus, it was decided to analyze in particular monographic volumes dealing with the history of the origins of video art in Italy. The aim was, in fact, to get a wide range of types of "narrations", as in the case of contemporary art and architecture magazines, which are examined in the second part of the essay. After the selection, for an analytical and comparative study of the various historiography, the essay focuses only on the Terza Biennale Internazionale della Giovane Pittura. Gennaio ’70. Comportamenti, oggetti e mediazioni (Third International Biennial of Young Painting. January '70. Behaviors, Objects and Mediations, 1970, Bologna), the exhibition which - after Lucio Fontana's pioneering experiments - is said to be the first sign of the arrival of videotape in Italy (called at the time videorecording), curated by Renato Barilli, Tommaso Trini, Andrea Emiliani and Maurizio Calvesi. The narration given so far of this exhibition appeared more mythological than historical and could be compared structurally to that of the many numerous beginnings that historiographyies on international video art identify as ‘first’ and ‘generative’. In the first part of the essay the 'facts' related to Gennaio ’70, as narrated by historiography on video art, are compared. In the second part the survey is carried out through some of the direct sources identified during the research, with the aim of answering to questions raised by the comparison between historiographies. Concluding, it is important to underline that the tapes containing the videos transmitted have not been found and seem to have disappeared since the ending of the exhibition. Nevertheless, the deepening of the works and documentation transmitted during the exhibition is possible thanks to other types of sources which give us many valuable information regarding video techniques and practices at the beginning of 1970 in Italy.

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