Philology

About: Philology is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3116 publications have been published within this topic receiving 18978 citations. The topic is also known as: Philology. Linguistics.

Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature

Abstract: A half-century after its translation into English, Erich Auerbach's "Mimesis" still stands as a monumental achievement in literary criticism. A brilliant display of erudition, wit, and wisdom, his exploration of how great European writers from Homer to Virginia Woolf depicted reality has taught generations how to read Western literature. This new expanded edition includes a substantial essay in introduction by Edward Said as well as an essay, never before translated into English, in which Auerbach responds to his critics.A German Jew, Auerbach was forced out of his professorship at the University of Marburg in 1935. He left for Turkey, where he taught at the state university in Istanbul. There he wrote "Mimesis," publishing it in German after the end of the war. Displaced as he was, Auerbach produced a work of great erudition that contains no footnotes, basing his arguments instead on searching, illuminating readings of key passages from his primary texts. His aim was to show how from antiquity to the twentieth century literature progressed toward ever more naturalistic and democratic forms of representation. This essentially optimistic view of European history now appears as a defensive--and impassioned--response to the inhumanity he saw in the Third Reich. Ranging over works in Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and English, Auerbach used his remarkable skills in philology and comparative literature to refute any narrow form of nationalism or chauvinism, in his own day and ours. For many readers, both inside and outside the academy, "Mimesis" is among the finest works of literary criticism ever written.

Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early 'Abbāsid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th Centuries)

Abstract: From the middle of the eighth century to the tenth century, almost all non-literary and non-historical secular Greek books, including such diverse topics as astrology, alchemy, physics, botany and medicine, that were not available throughout the eastern Byzantine Empire and the Near East, were translated into Arabic. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture explores the major social, political and ideological factors that occasioned the unprecedented translation movement from Greek into Arabic in Baghdad, the newly founded capital of the Arab dynasty of the 'Abbasids', during the first two centuries of their rule. Dimitri Gutas draws upon the preceding historical and philological scholarship in Greco-Arabic studies and the study of medieval translations of secular Greek works into Arabic and analyses the social and historical reasons for this phenomenon. Dimitri Gutas provides a stimulating, erudite and well-documented survey of this key movement in the transmission of ancient Greek culture to the Middle Ages.

Humanism and Democratic Criticism

Abstract: Humanism's Sphere The Changing Bases of Humanistic Study and Practice The Return to Philology Introduction to Erich Auerbach's Mimesis The Public Role of Writers and Intellectuals

The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India

Abstract: List of Maps Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction Culture, Power, (Pre)modernity The Cosmopolitan in Theory and Practice The Vernacular in Theory and Practice Theory, Metatheory, Practice, Metapractice PART 1. THE SANSKRIT COSMOPOLIS Chapter 1. The Language of the Gods Enters the World 1.1 Precosmopolitan Sanskrit: Monopolization and Ritualization 1.2 From Resistance to Appropriation 1.3. Expanding the Prestige Economy of Sanskrit Chapter 2. Literature and the Cosmopolitan Language of Literature 2.1. From Liturgy to Literature 2.2. Literary Language as a Closed Set 2.3. The Final Theory of Literary Language: Bhoja's Poetics Chapter 3. The World Conquest and Regime of the Cosmopolitan Style 3.1. Inscribing Political Will in Sanskrit 3.2. The Semantics of Inscriptional Discourse: The Poetics of Power, Malava, 1141 3.3. The Pragmatics of Inscriptional Discourse: Making History, Kalyana, 1008 Chapter 4. Sanskrit Culture as Courtly Practice 4.1. Grammatical and Political Correctness: The Politics of Grammar 4.2. Grammatical and Political Correctness: Grammar Envy 4.3. Literature and Kingly Virtuosity Chapter 5. The Map of Sanskrit Knowledge and the Discourse on the Ways of Literature 5.1. The Geocultural Matrix of Sanskrit Knowledge 5.2. Poetry Man, Poetics Woman, and the Birth-Space of Literature 5.3. The Ways of Literature: Tradition, Method, and Stylistic Regions Chapter 6. Political Formations and Cultural Ethos 6.1. Production and Reproduction of Epic Space 6.2. Power and Culture in a Cosmos Chapter 7. A European Countercosmopolis 7.1. Latinitas 7.2. Imperium Romanum PART 2. THE VERNACULAR MILLENIUM Chapter 8. Beginnings, Textualization, Superposition 8.1. Literary Newness Enters the World 8.2. From Language to Text 8.3. There Is No Parthenogenesis in Culture Chapter 9. Creating a Regional World: The Case of Kannada 9.1. Vernacularization and Political Inscription 9.2. The Way of the King of Poets and the Places of Poetry 9.3. Localizing the Universal Political: Pampa Bharatam 9.4. A New Philology: From Norm-Bound Practice to Practice-Bound Norm Chapter 10. Vernacular Poetries and Polities in Southern Asia 10.1. The Cosmopolitan Vernacularization of South and Southeast Asia 10.2. Region and Reason 10.3. Vernacular Polities 10.4. Religion and Vernacularization Chapter 11. Europe Vernacularized 11.1. Literacy and Literature 11.2. Vernacular Anxiety 11.3. A New Cultural Politics Chapter 12. Comparative and Connective Vernacularization 12.1. European Particularism and Indian Difference 12.2. A Hard History of the Vernacular Millennium PART 3. THEORY AND PRACTICE OF CULTURE AND POWER Chapter 13. Actually Existing Theory and Its Discontents 13.1. Natural Histories of Culture-Power 13.2. Primordialism, Linguism, Ethnicity, and Other Unwarranted Generalizations 13.3. Legitimation, Ideology, and Related Functionalisms Chapter 14. Indigenism and Other Culture-Power Concepts of Modernity 14.1. Civilizationalism, or Indigenism with Too Little History 14.2. Nationalism, or Indigenism with Too Much History Epilogue. From Cosmopolitan-or-Vernacular to Cosmopolitan-and-Vernacular Appendix A A.1 Bhoja's Theory of Literary Language (from the Srngaraprakasa) A. 2 Bhoja's Theory of Ornamentation (from the Sarasvatikanthabharana) A.3 Sripala's Bilpank Prasasti of King Jayasimha Siddharaja A.4 The Origins of Hemacandra's Grammar (from Prabhacandra's Prabhavakacarita) A.5 The Invention of Kavya (from Rjaekhara's Kavyamimamsa) Appendix B B.1 Approximate Dates of Principal Dynasties B.2 Names of Important Peoples and Places with Their Approximate Modern Equivalents or Locations Publication History Bibliography Index