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Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych - The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual - 9780801480461 - V9780801480461
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The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual

€ 43.23
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Description for The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual Paperback. Series: Myth and Poetics. Num Pages: 352 pages, black & white illustrations. BIC Classification: DSC. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 230 x 152 x 21. Weight in Grams: 534.

A body of Bedouin oral poetry which was collected in the second or third Islamic century, the pre-Islamic qasidah, or ode, stands with the Qur'an as a twin foundation of Arabo-Islamic literary culture. Throughout the rich fifteen-hundred-year history of classical Arabic literature, the qasidah served as profane anti-text to the sacred text of the Qur'an. While recognizing the esteem in which Arabs have traditionally held this poetry of the pagan past, modern critics in both East and West have yet to formulate a poetics that would provide the means to analyze and evaluate the qasidah. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych here offers ... Read more

Drawing on the insights of contemporary literary theory, anthropology, and the history of religions, Stetkevych maintains that the poetry of the qasidah is ritualized in both form and function. She brings to bear an extensive body of lore, legend, and myth as she interprets individual themes and images with references to rites of passage and rituals of sacrifice. Her English translations of the poems under discussion convey the power and beauty of the originals, as well as a sense of their complex intertextuality and distinctive lexicon.

The Mute Immortals Speak will be important for students and scholars in the fields of Middle Eastern literatures, Islamic studies, folklore, oral literature, and literary theory, and by anthropologists, comparatists, historians of religion, and medievalists.

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Product Details

Publisher
Cornell University Press United States
Number of pages
352
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2010
Series
Myth and Poetics
Condition
New
Number of Pages
352
Place of Publication
Ithaca, United States
ISBN
9780801480461
SKU
V9780801480461
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1

About Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych
Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych is Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Indiana University. Her books include The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode; Early Islamic Poetry and Poetics: The Formation of the Classical Islamic World; and The Mantle Odes: Arabic ... Read more

Reviews for The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual
"The Mute Immortals Speak will be of interest to anyone seriously interested in Islam. It should also engage a wide, interdisciplinary audience through its demonstration that at the heart of the qasidah and its satellite genres is a central human dilemma involving human identity, conflict, belonging, and community."-International Journal of Middle East Studies "In this analysis of the great Arabic ... Read more

Goodreads reviews for The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual


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