Reflections on Certain Principles That May Guide a New Commentary (Tafsir) of the Qur’an

The author starts from his experience as a translator of the Qur’an to argue on the need for a new commentary. The aim of such a new approach would be to convey a vision of Islam more in tune with Islamic history. Further, this is also needed in relation to the substantial Muslim communities living outside of the Muslim world. Antecedents are important in this and especially those coming from the so-called literary moment in the 20th-century Qur’an commentary tradition. A new commentary should be conducted by a committee. Additionally, the second part of the paper explores this possibility and what this committee should take care of in this direction, such as gender-consciousness or environment questions.

The Colorless History of Pseudo-Aristotle’s De coloribus

This article examines the medieval reception history of De coloribus. This pseudo-Aristotelian treatise on colors was translated from Greek into Latin in the thirteenth century, but the question of its success and use by contemporary scholars has not yet received any attention. After an examination of its medieval commentary tradition, the marginal glosses, and the first attestations, I conclude that De coloribus was scarcely used in the medieval Latin West, although the translation survived in a significant number of manuscripts. In the second part of the article, I look into some possible explanations for this limited reception history. One of the main factors is the availability of several alternative discussions on color in the Aristotelian corpus as well as in the non-Aristotelian scientific literature.

‘The Restful Place’

Addressing the apparent absence of vernacular literary criticism in early Tudor culture, this chapter argues that a nascent poetics lies within the period’s lyric poetry itself. The critical lexicon that laces this lyric poetry shows poets beginning to theorize literature in spatial, geometric, or formal terms. Recalling the place logic of Henrician pedagogy and the blurring of boundaries between poetic invention and critical judgement, the poetry of Wyatt, Surrey, and their early Tudor acolytes ventures a rudimentary theory of poetic composition as the constraining of memory into form. Responding to the Italian commentary tradition that locates Petrarch’s poems in allusive relation to other poems, early Tudor lyric gestures to an intertextual model of how to read texts in a network of remembered literary ‘places’. As imitation fuses into commentary, external places of criticism are constrained internally within Henrician poetry itself.

Conclusion

The conclusion suggests that Virgil’s importance was greater in the twelfth century than previously thought. Dante was not the first to “resuscitate” Virgilianism after the Carolingian period, as is often claimed, nor were Renaissance authors the first—another thing sometimes claimed. Furthermore, the importance of the Virgilian commentary tradition in shaping these epics suggests an alternative origin for the Platonism that has previously been detected in the poetry of this period. Winthrop Wetherbee had argued in Platonism and Poetry that the reason for such Platonism in the poetry of the twelfth century was due to the so-called Chartrian interest in Calcidius’s translation of the Timaeus. The research presented in this book suggests that nearly all of such Platonism detected by Wetherbee—especially the Platonic ascent of the soul to the creator—can be explained through commentary on the Aeneid without direct recourse to the Timaeus.