The ancients and Shakespeare on time : some remarks on the war of generations /
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In The Ancients and Shakespeare on Time Piotr Nowak depicts a world where tradition - devoid of gravity, "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything" - attempts to curb the young and new, while youth resists with all its power, vitality and characteristic insolence. The wars of generations, which Nowak explores in the works of Plato, Aristophanes and Shakespeare, pertain to the essence and meaning of time. They make up the dramatic tensions in the transgenerational dialogue between the old and the young.
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1 online resource (xiv, 106 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-101) and index. :
9789401210676 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Literature and the encounter with immanence /
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In Literature and the Encounter with Immanence Brynnar Swenson collects nine original essays that approach the relationship between literature and immanence through methodologies grounded in the philosophy of Spinoza. One of Spinoza's most provocative claims is a simple declaration of ignorance: "We do not know what a body can do." A literary theory based on immanence privileges the ontological status of the text and the material act of reading. Rather than ask what a text means, the essays here ask what a text can do. Each essay documents a distinct literary and philosophical encounter with immanence and, as a result, opens up a space to read literature as one would read philosophy and vice versa .
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1 online resource (ix, 192 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004311930 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
In-Between Identities: Signs of Islam in Contemporary American Writing.
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For the writers and artists in In-Between Identities: Signs of Islam in Contemporary American Writing , contemporary Muslim American identity is neither singular nor fixed. Rather than dismiss the tradition in favor of more secular approaches, however, all of the figures here discover in Muhammad's revelation resources for affirming such uncertainty. For them, the Qur'anic notion of a divine "sign" validates creation, even that creativity born of contrasting if not competing assumptions about identity. To develop this claim, individual chapters in the book discuss Muslim faith in the work of poets Naomi Shihab Nye, Kazim Ali, Tyson Amir and Amir Sulaiman; novelists Mohja Kahf, Rabih Alameddine, and Willow Wilson; illustrator Sandow Birk; playwright Ayad Akhtar; and the online record of the 30 Mosques in 30 Days project.
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1 online resource. :
9789004382541
Orality and textuality in the Iranian world : patterns of interaction across the centuries /
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The volume demonstrates the cultural centrality of the oral tradition for Iranian studies. It contains contributions from scholars from various areas of Iranian and comparative studies, among which are the pre-Islamic Zoroastrian tradition with its wide network of influences in late antique Mesopotamia, notably among the Jewish milieu; classical Persian literature in its manifold genres; medieval Persian history; oral history; folklore and more. The essays in this collection embrace both the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods, both verbal and visual media, as well as various language communities (Middle Persian, Persian, Tajik, Dari) and geographical spaces (Greater Iran in pre-Islamic and Islamic medieval periods; Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan of modern times). Taken as a whole, the essays reveal the unique blending of oral and literate poetics in the texts or visual artefacts each author focuses upon, conceptualizing their interrelationship and function.
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1 online resource (xx, 456 pages) : illustrations (some color) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004291973 :
1570-078X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Dostoevsky's legal and moral philosophy : the trial of Dmitri Karamazov /
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This work closely examines the trial of Dmitri Karamazov as the springboard to explaining and critically assessing Dostoevsky's legal and moral philosophy. The author connects Dostoevsky's objections to Russia's acceptance of western juridical notions such as the rule of law and an adversary system of adjudication with his views on fundamental human nature, the principle of universal responsibility, and his invocation of unconditional love. Central to Dostoevsky's vision is his understanding of the relationship between the dual human yearnings for individualism and community. In the process, the author related Dostoevsky's conclusions to the thought of Plato, Augustine, Anselm, Dante, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Throughout the work, the author compares, contrasts, and evaluates Dostoevsky's analyses with contemporary discussions of the rule of law, the adversary system, and the relationship between individualism and communitarianism.
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1 online resource (xvi, 226 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-223) and index. :
9789004325425 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Biblical Hebrew in Context: Historical and Linguistic Perspectives, Essays in Honour of Professor Jan P. Lettinga.
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For half a century Jan P. Lettinga (1921), Professor emeritus of Semitic Languages at the Theological University Kampen (Broederweg), greatly influenced the teaching of Biblical Hebrew in the Faculties of Theology, Religious Studies and Semitic Languages in the Netherlands and Belgium by his widely used grammar. This volume honours his legacy and reputation as a Semitist. Lettinga always asked how a historical approach of the Semitic languages and literature would contribute to their understanding, and how this elucidates our reading of the Hebrew Scriptures. Biblical Hebrew in Context applies this approach to issues reflecting the full breadth of Lettinga's interests: Mesopotamian and Biblical Law, the history, grammar and teaching of Hebrew and Aramaic, and the translation and interpretation of Ugaritic and Old Testament texts.
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1 online resource. :
9789004380851
The meaning of color in ancient Mesopotamia /
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In The Meaning of Color in Ancient Mesopotamia, Shiyanthi Thavapalan offers the first in-depth study of the words and expressions for colors in the Akkadian language (c. 2500-500 BCE). By combining philological analysis with the technical investigation of materials, she debunks the misconception that people in Mesopotamia had a limited sense of color and positions the development of Akkadian color language as a corollary of the history of materials and techniques in the ancient Near East.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004415416
Die Ästhetik der augusteischen Dichtung : eine Ästhetik des Verzichts : Überlegungen zum Spätwerk des Horaz /
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Starting from some central texts of Horace's late poetry this book tries to offer a general picture of Horace's poetry, his political poetry and his relationship with his patrons in particular. It offers a large variety of comparative material from modern literature and is aimed not only at classicists, but at students of literature and history in general. All quotations from Greek and Latin texts are translated.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047444107 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Aramaic incantation bowls in museum collections /
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The Frau Professor Hilprecht Collection of Babylonian Antiquities at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena houses one of the major European collections of incantation bowls. Forty bowls bear texts written in the Jewish, Manichaean Syriac or Mandaic scripts, and most of the rest (some twenty-five objects) in the Pahlavi script or in various pseudoscripts. The present volume comprises new editions of the Aramaic (and Hebrew) bowl texts based on high-resolution photographs taken by the authors, together with brief descriptions and photographs of the remaining material. New readings are often supported with close-up photographs. The volume is intended to serve as a basis for further study of magic in late Antiquity and of the Late Eastern Aramaic dialects in which the texts were composed.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004411838
From single sign to pseudo-script : an ancient Egyptian system of workmen's identity marks /
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Writing is not the only notation system used in literate societies. Some visual communication systems are very similar to writing, but work differently. Identity marks are typical examples of such systems, and this book presents a particularly well-documented marking system used in Pharaonic Egypt as an exemplary case. From Single Sign to Pseudo-Script is the first book to fully discuss the nature and development of an ancient marking system, its historical background, and the fascinating story of its decipherment. Chapters on similar systems in other cultures and on semiotic theory help to distinguish between unique and universal features. Written by Egyptologist Ben Haring, the book addresses scholars interested in marking systems, writing, literacy, and the semiotics of visual communication.
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1 online resource (xvi, 291 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004357549 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Unconscious in Philosophy, and French and European Literature : Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century.
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This book traces the idea of the unconscious as it emerges in French and European literature. It discusses the functioning of the normal unconscious mind and provides examples of the abnormal unconscious in poems and literature. Psychiatric cases as they are understood today are illustrated as mirrored in literature describing the functioning of the disturbed mind.
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1 online resource (403 pages) :
9789042029217 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The letter of Mara bar Sarapion in context : proceedings of the symposium held at Utrecht University, 10-12 December 2009 /
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The Letter of Mara bar Sarapion to his son - preserved in a single Syriac manuscript (7th. century CE) - still speaks to its readers, evocatively depicting the dramatic situation of a nobleman imprisoned after the Roman capture of Samosata, capital of Commagene. The letter is best known today for a passage on the "wise king of the Jews," which may be one of the earliest pagan testimonies concerning Jesus Christ. Ongoing controversy over the letter's date, nature, and purpose has, however, led to the widespread neglect of this intriguing document. In the present volume, Merz and Tieleman have brought together cutting-edge research from an interdisciplinary team of leading experts that significantly advances our appreciation of the letter and its historical context.
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1 online resource (xiv, 245 pages) : illustrations, maps. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004233010 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Values of literature /
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Why we read literature and why we should read literature are age-old questions that have, in recent years, gained unprecedented scope and intensity, against the backdrop of what has been perceived as a world-wide crisis in the humanities. While scholars frequently discuss different types of value separately, in this volume values of literature are approached in the plural: we argue that the ethical, aesthetic, cognitive, affective, social, historical, and existential values of literature should be explored in connection with each other. The three parts of the book explore the relationship between ethics and aesthetics; the cognitive, affective, and social values of literature; and the construction and questioning of literary values in society. Throughout the book, we discuss the different things literature can do - ranging from affirmation of social dogmas to its capacities for self-questioning and challenging of moral certainties - through the dynamic interplay of its ethical and aesthetic, cognitive and affective aspects. Literature not only reflects and draws on the values of the historical world from which it stems; it also actively addresses, challenges, and transforms those values and explores new ways to understand value. Through these complementary processes, literature engages in its own distinctively literary forms of value inquiry.
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1 online resource (vi, 222 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401212052 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The alphabet of nature /
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F. M van Helmont's Alphabet of Nature was one of many books published about language in the early modern period. The "language debate," as it has come to be called, was a topic of compelling interest to major figures such as Reuchlin, Rabelais, Paracelsus, Agrippa, Postel, Boehme, Kircher, Hobbes, Descartes, Comenius, Spinoza, Locke, Boyle, Newton, and Leibniz. At issue were profound questions about whether language is natural or artificial, ordained by God or created by man. The answers given entailed a web of consequences that could lead to arrest, imprisonment, even execution. It is therefore not surprising that van Helmont wrote his book while imprisoned in the dungeons of the Roman Inquisition.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [205]-208) and index. :
9789047419983 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The poetics of grammar and the metaphysics of sound and sign /
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This book examines the seemingly universal notion of a grammatical cosmos. Individual essays discuss how many of the great civilizations provide cognitive maps that emerge from a metaphysical linguistics in which sounds, syllables and other signs form the constructive elements of reality. The essays address cross-cultural issues such as: Why does grammar serve as a template in these cultures? How are such templates culturally contoured? To what end are they applied - id est, what can one do with grammar - , and how does it work upon the world? The book is divided into three sections that deal with the metaphysics of linguistic creation; practices of encoding and decoding as a means of deciphering reality; and language in the widest sense as a medium for self- and cultural transformation. Contributors include: Jan Assman, Sara Sviri, Michael Stone, M. Finkelberg, Yigal Bronner, Martin Kern, Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Dan Martin, Jonathan Garb, Tom Hunter, David Shulman, and Sergio La Porta.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047421658 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Aramaic bowl spells : Jewish Babylonian Aramaic bowls. Volume one /
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The corpus of Aramaic incantation bowls from Sasanian Mesopotamia is perhaps the most important source we have for studying the everyday beliefs and practices of the Jewish, Christian, Mandaean, Manichaean, Zoroastrian and Pagan communities on the eve of the Islamic conquests. The bowls are from the Schøyen Collection, which has some 650 texts in different varieties of Aramaic: Jewish Aramaic, Mandaic and Syriac, and forms the largest collection of its kind anywhere in the world. This volume presents editions of sixty-four Jewish Aramaic incantation bowls, with accompanying introductions, translations, philological notes, photographs and indices. The themes covered include the magical divorce and the accounts of the wonder-working sages Ḥanina ben Dosa and Joshua bar Peraḥia. It is the first of a multi-volume project that aims to publish the entire Schøyen Collection of Aramaic incantation bowls.
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1 online resource (xxiii, 368 pages :) : illustrations (some color) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004229372 :
2211-016X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The neo-Aramaic dialect of Barwar /
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The Aramaic language has continued to be spoken in various dialects down to modern times. Many of these dialects, however, are now endangered due to political events in the Middle East over the last hundred years. This work, in three volumes, presents a description of one such endangered neo-Aramaic dialect, that of the Assyrian Christian community of the Barwar region in northern Iraq. It is a unique record of the dialect based on interviews with the surviving older generation of the community. Volume one contains a detailed grammatical description of the dialect, including sections on phonology, morphology and syntax. Volume two contains an extensive glossary of the lexicon of the dialect with illustrations of various aspects of the material culture. Volume three contains transcriptions of numerous recorded texts, including folktales, ethnographic texts, songs, and proverbs.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789047443490 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Representation of speech events in Chariton's Callirhoe and the Acts of the Apostles /
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In The Representation of Speech Events in Chariton's Callirhoe and the Acts of the Apostles , Adrian T. Smith summarizes cross-linguistic research on how and why narrators vary the formulae that introduce direct speech. This research is applied to Chariton and to Acts. The findings demonstrate that narrators vary quotation formulae for numerous pragmatic purposes, including the tracking of conversational dynamics via a set of 'marked' and 'unmarked' quotation devices.
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1 online resource (pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004274891 :
0077-8842 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The reconfiguration of Hebrew in the Hellenistic period : proceedings of the seventh International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira at Strasbourg Univer...
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The present volume of proceedings offers cutting-edge research on the Hebrew language in the late Persian, Hellenistic and Roman periods. Fourteen specialists of ancient Hebrew illuminate various aspects of the language, from phonology through grammar and syntax to semantics and interpretation. The research furthers the exegesis of biblical and non-biblical texts, it helps determine the chronological outline of Hebrew literature, and contributes to a better understanding of the sociolinguistic aspects of the language in the period of the Second Temple. Hebrew did not die out after the Babylonian exile, but continued to be used in speaking and writing in a variety of settings.
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Includes index. :
1 online resource. :
9789004366770 :
0169-9962 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
C.S. Lewis's Christian apologetics : pro and con /
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Are C. S. Lewis's major arguments in defense of Christian belief sound? In C. S. Lewis's Christian Apologetics: Pro and Con , defenders and critics of Lewis's apologetics square off and debate the merits of Lewis's arguments from desire, from reason, from morality, the "trilemma" argument for the divinity of Christ, as well as Lewis's response to the problem of evil. By means of these lively, in-depth debates, readers will emerge with a deeper understanding and appreciation of today's most influential Christian apologist.
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1 online resource (xi, 272 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-265) and index. :
9789004301658 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.