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Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective is a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). Initiated in 1996 and launched in 1999, it aims at finding suitable methods and approaches for studying and analysing literature globally, emphasizing the comparative and intercultural aspect. Even though we nowadays have fast and easy access to any kind of information on literature and literary history, we encounter, more than ever, the difficulty of finding a credible overall perspective on world literary history. Until today, literary cultures and traditions have usually been studied separately, each field using its own principles and methods. Even the conceptual...
Who speaks for Islam? To whom do Muslims turn when they look for guidance? To what extent do individual scholars and preachers exert religious authority, and how can it be assessed? The upsurge of Islamism has lent new urgency to these questions, but they have deeper roots and a much longer history, and they certainly should not be considered in the light of present concerns only. The present volume – grown out of an international symposium at the Free University, Berlin in 2002 – is not so much concerned with religious authority, but with religious authorities, men and women claiming, projecting and exerting religious authority within a given context. It addresses issues such as the rel...
I.B.Tauris in association with the Iran Heritage Foundation Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire has been acclaimed as one of the most intellectually exciting books about late antique Persia to have been published for years. It proposes a convincing contemporary answer to an age-old mystery and conundrum: why, in the seventh century ce, did the seemingly powerful and secure Sasanian empire of Persia succumb so quickly and disastrously to the all-conquering armies of Islam? In her bold solution to this enigma, Parvaneh Pourshariati explains that the decentralized dynastic system of the Sasanian ruling hierarchy in fact contained the seeds of its own destruction. This confederacy, whose powerbase relied on patronage and preferment, eventually became unstable, and its degeneration sealed the fate of a doomed dynasty.
Hanne Loland studies gendered god-language in the Hebrew Bible. She offers a theoretical framework that is helpful for the interpretation of biblical language used in reference to God and for the broader theological and scholarly debate on God and gender. One of the main questions Loland discusses is whether and how gende r is salient - that is, of significance - when gendered god-language occurs in a text. This is a new line of questioning in Hebrew Bible research, which so far has been mostly concerned with mapping the occurrences of feminine god-language. The question of gender significance is debated both in theoretical discussions on God, gender and language, and in three case studies (...
Globalism has sharpened the urban/rural divide in 21st century Turkish elections
In our globalised world, literature is less and less confined to national spaces. Europe-centred frameworks for literary studies have become insufficient; academics are increasingly called upon to address matters of cultural difference. In this unique volume, leading scholars discuss the critical and methodical challenges that these developments pose to the writing of literary history. What is the object of literary history? What is the meaning of the term “world literature”? How do we compare different cultural systems of genres? How do we account theoretically for literary transculturation? What are the implications of postcolonial studies for the discipline of comparative literature? Ranging in focus from the Persian epic of Majnun Layla and Zulu praise poetry to South Korean novels and Brazilian antropofagismo, the essays offer a concise overview of these and related questions. Their aim is not to reach a consensus on these matters. They show instead what is at stake in the emergent field of global comparatism.
Bennie H. Reynolds analyzes of the language (poetics) of ancient Jewish historical apocalypses. He investigates how the dramatis personae, i.e., deities, angels/demons, and humans are described in the Book of Daniel (chapters 2, 7, 8, and 10–12) the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 85–90), 4QFourKingdoms(a-b) ar, the Book of the Words of Noah (1QapGen 5 29–18?), the Apocryphon of Jeremiah C, and 4QPseudo-Daniel(a-b) ar. The primary methodologies for this study are linguistic- and motif-historical analysis and the theoretical framework is informed by a wide range of ancient and modern thinkers including Artemidorus of Daldis, Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Peirce, Leo Oppenheim, Claude Lévi-...
This book focuses on the crises facing Al Qaeda and how the mass killing of Muslims is challenging its credibility as a leader among Islamist jihadist organizations. The book argues that these crises are directly related to Al Qaeda’s affiliation with the extreme violence employed against Muslims in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the decade since 9/11. Al Qaeda’s public and private responses to this violence differ greatly. While in public Al Qaeda has justified those attacks declaring that, for the establishment of a state of ‘true believers’, they are a necessary evil, in private Al Qaeda has been advising its local affiliates to refrain from killing Muslims. To better un...
Contemporary distinctions between religion and spirituality can often be traced to rebellion against hierarchical institutions with biases towards women and minorities that constrain individual freedom. This opposition is carefully addressed in this volume, with greater attention paid to gender and power in the context of contemporary spirituality and how these relate to the distinction between religion and spirituality.