Sulle ali di un angelo (Bestseller Vol. 408) (Italian Edition)

Italian Bookshelf after the reinstatement of the Medici family as its rulers, and a significant sampling of his literary corpus, including public and private writings.

The text is broken down into 23 concise chapters with an informative appendix and detailed notes. Little information is presented about Machiavelli before , since most of what posterity knows about him begins when he assumes the role of secretary of the Florentine chancery. Several parallels exist between his major and minor works and recur in his official and personal missives: During this time Machiavelli exchanged letters with his friend Francesco Vettori, which reflected on the lessons gained during his active political life, including the diplomacy of Florentine territory, diplomatic missions, and military reform.

Vivanti highlights several important concepts and stratagems within this work e. From around Machiavelli participated in gatherings of literary, philosophical, and political conversations in the Orti Oricellari, making lasting friendships with his younger interlocutors, who encouraged him to write. During the last years of his life, Machiavelli learned of catastrophic military defeats on the Italian peninsula, namely, the Battle of Pavia in and the Sack of Rome in These military operations would be the cause of persistent anxiety and reflection for the Florentine until his death.

His intelligence, ironic spirit, and literary genius are masterfully highlighted in this work. The Secret Language of the Self. Una rassegna che si apre con Goldoni e si chiude con Leopardi, passando per Bertola, Alfieri, Manzoni ed altri ancora. Nei successivi due capitoli Camerino indaga sul ruolo giocato dalla poetica di Bertola nel contesto del cosiddetto preromanticismo. Quattro capitoli sono dedicati ad Alfieri, o per meglio dire al linguaggio alfieriano.

Al linguaggio del Saul sono dedicati gli ultimi due contributi sul poeta astigiano: A Manzoni sono dedicati tre capitoli. La rassegna si conclude con due capitoli su Leopardi. Il primo indaga sul precoce interesse per Algarotti, che investe questioni linguistiche, ma soprattutto il concetto di noia. Grace, Melancholy, and the Uncanny. This new attention acknowledges Leopardi as one of the most innovative authors not only of Italian nineteenth-century but of European modernity tout court, who was both very aware of the cultural tensions of his own time, but whose work also invites interpretation using the lenses of the most groundbreaking, current scholarship including, for example, Ecocriticism or New Materialism.

Yet, even these minor issues do not diminish the innovative contribution this volume represents. Questo rilievo dello studioso permette di seguire e identificare un percorso di evoluzione della dimensione religiosa del Leopardi. Damiani mostra sempre acutezza di analisi e fornisce copiose evidenze a supporto delle sue tesi. Castiglione di Sicilia CT: Accademia Internazionale Il Convivio, Ai due saggi sulla critica carducciana se ne aggiungono due sulla poesia.

Italian Bookshelf difende il progresso sociale e il libero pensiero simbolizzati nella figura di Satana. Sulla ricezione critica e sul mito del Carducci commemorato dai posteri si concentrano rispettivamente Alessandro Merci ed Elena Rampazzo. Mentre Merci offre una rassegna dettagliata di pareri critici contemporanei e riferimenti a Carducci nei versi di vari poeti successivi, Rampazzo esplora la mitografia di Carducci negli scritti commemorativi di Marinetti e Paolo Buzzi.

Fabrizio Serra Editore, Lettere e scritti vari. Gennaro Barbarisi e Paolo Bartesaghi. Degno di nota il trittico per Silvia Curtoni Verza n. Non mancano lettere che contribuiscono alla ricostruzione della storia interna ed esterna dei testi pariniani, come la n. Tutte le opere edite e inedite. Italian Bookshelf Livio Pestilli. This is the first monograph on a major Neapolitan painter of the late Baroque.

Due to unkind critical fortunes, Paolo de Matteis has been eclipsed by Francesco Solimena and by his own teacher, Luca Giordano. Similarly, many revisionist articles are inaccessible to Anglophone readers. Paolo de Matteis was born in rural Campania. Under noble sponsorship, he acquired a classical idiom in Rome.

Nearby, he decorated the architecturally splendid residence of the duke of Monteleone. Later, connections with Neapolitan cardinals resulted in new sacred commissions from the Papal Curia. Given this curriculum vitae, one wonders how he could have been relegated to the ranks of minori. To the non-specialist, the book seems to begin in medias res.

Tantalizing bits of his life story emerge in the course of the study he married, had several children, gave painting lessons to his daughters, was driven to Rome by a difficult second marriage, etc. One wishes that there had been a clear biography of de Matteis at the outset of the book. Since this is the first monograph, it would have been helpful to assemble all such facts. The earlier material is somewhat confusingly presented, because chapters are organized thematically rather than chronologically.

The author grapples with discrete critical problems before having prepared the way with a good exposition. Perhaps the initial unevenness is a matter of trying to distill so much material or simply of priming the authorial pump. This oft-repeated trope could have been relegated to the biography, freeing the author to move on to stylistic and iconographical analyses. Early on, Pestilli tends to jump among sources, often from different centuries and not always in chronological order.

Lacking a critical framework, it is difficult to follow the argumentation. Again, it would have been useful to simply present a cogent survey of criticism. Chapter titles — novellistic rather than dryly functional — do not offer immediate cognizance of the contents, but the tenacious reader will be rewarded with a series of solid discussions on particular works or series of works within their historical contexts. Chapter six diagrams a fascinating collaboration between painter and patron: Italian Bookshelf philosopher, guided de Matteis through various sketches, drawings, and oil studies of The Judgment of Hercules.

A detail particular to Neapolitan artists of his day is the realistic inclusion of worn or weathered ceramic tile floors. These were praised by contemporaries and attracted the attention of foreign visitors. Chapter ten examines a cycle of paintings at the Certosa di San Martino which depicts the life of St. Here, Pestilli excels in his analysis of the iconographical program, grounding it in a succinct theological overview which includes the Immaculate Conception, the rise of the cult of St.

Joseph, and how the modern significance of the Rosary stems from the Battle of Lepanto. Again, we see how de Matteis was sensitive to the ideology of his commissioner. Innovative details reflect not only St. Such are the attributes of a master painter. The Apparatus includes lists of abbreviations, color plates, and black and white illustrations.

Two Appendices contain checklists of works by De Matteis or his workshop arranged by title and by date. Titles analyzed in the text are referenced in the general Index. The lengthy bibliography spans four and a half centuries, comprising art historical studies as well as background readings for important concepts. Finally, the overall layout is commendable. Art books or exhibition catalogues frequently become embarassed by their own riches: Pestilli and his editors have wisely grouped all color plates at the center, numbered sequentially.

Plentiful black and white illustrations are located appropriately within the text; their numbers reflect first the chapter number and then the sequence within that chapter. This system allows multiple citations of a single image anywhere in the book and the rapid location of any item under discussion. Scholars of eighteenth-century art, culture and history owe a debt of gratitude to Ashgate for undertaking the publication of this handsome, well-produced volume.

Italian Bookshelf Gabriella Romani. Toronto University Press, La creazione di un sistema postale nazionale dopo il ebbe un ruolo fondamentale nel processo di unificazione del nuovo stato e, come scrive Gabriella Romani nel volume Postal Culture: La conseguente riduzione dei costi di tariffazione permise anche alle classi meno privilegiate di partecipare a questa rete di scambio e comunicazione: Painting in Film, Painting on Film. Is it still possible to say something new and thought-provoking about Federico Fellini?

The book opens with a dense introduction devoted to framing the theoretical and methodological ground and to pointing out the polemical targets of the inquiry. On the contrary, as his private library proves, he was well aware of the cultural and intellectual trends in those years, in particular French structuralist and post-structuralist contexts: Italian Bookshelf , preserving a balanced tension between postmodernist issues and a romantic-like global project.

The four chapters into which the book is divided cover four different films, showing from time to time a specific aspect of this relationship. Through a sophisticated film philology, Aldouby untangles the symbolist, intertextual plot that informs the text, convincingly showing the connections between the embedded or concealed specific art-historical quotations and the anti-fascist discourse developed by narration. Here the intermedial dimension primarily concurs to shape a declaration of poetics encompassing both the work of the Italian director and a broad global cultural dimension.

Two converging lines emerge from the film: The third chapter — perhaps the least convincing of the entire book — is devoted to Fellini Satyricon Once again, the analysis of the art-historical intertext contributes to support this reading. Unfortunately, the dense plot created by the several and heterogeneous hidden quotations, which goes from Byzantine art to Klimt, from Bruegel to Picasso and Clerici, seems not to be reconstructed in a sufficiently organic scheme to propose an interpretation not limited to a superficial critique of a postmodernist aesthetics.

Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini. In the near future someone may well choose to fulfill this task. Nino Aragno Editore, Italian Bookshelf paradigma indiziario di Carlo Ginzburg. The Girl from Vajont. Troubador Publishing Ltd, Tullio Avoledo has published ten novels in less than ten years, but The Girl from Vajont La ragazza di Vajont, is the first one translated into English.

The Girl from Vajont is no exception. The setting of the novel is a small town called Vajont in Friuli, which is best remembered for a tragic accident, a collapsed dam, in the early sixties; consequently, almost two thousand people perished. Maybe this is why Avoledo chose the town as the setting for his fictional novel: The town is as decadent as its inhabitants, as Ania points out: He quickly falls in love with her and soon she becomes an obsession.

The protagonist explains that the identity of the mysterious girl must remain a secret: Most characters are nameless, like the girl from Vajont, the Cripple, and the Leader. The first trip together with the girl from Vajont is to this village that no longer exists. Like Avoledo himself, the main protagonist is a writer.

He has fallen ill and, thus, he has to make weekly trips to see a doctor. We learn that there is something wrong with his heart, but also with his mind. Although every time he sees a different doctor, they all seem to be more concerned about his writing than his health. It is clear that he has done something terrible and, consequently, he is guilt-ridden: My studies and my passion had been used to this: The protagonist is extremely concerned because the treatment he is undergoing does not make him better; on the contrary, it makes him forget things.

However, as his friend the Cripple points out: The girl from Vajont is a mischling, a half-caste, which is why she is in danger. Italian Bookshelf romantic getaway at a hotel by a lake for Christmas. He buys her a suitcase full of clothes, provides her false documents, and sends her off to Switzerland on a boat.

This dramatic ending takes the reader by surprise, as the narrative I recounts their final farewell: I walk down the gangway, with my heart racing and a thousand words suspended in my heart, words that will never be uttered. Sometime later he receives a letter from her with a picture. She is safe in Switzerland. The Girl from Vajont is a strange, but fascinating story. Avoledo confirms that he is worried about the extreme right-wing and xenophobic currents in Italy today, and their opposition to ethnic minorities.

For this reason, he quit his job at a bank and decided to become a writer. John Libbey Publishing, Ltd. Given the prominence of early cinematic developments in Italy, the dearth of critical scholarship on the silent era is both disconcerting and myopic. Despite interest in Fascism dispelling neorealism as a terminus post quem, the sound barrier has remained largely intact.

Giorgio Bertellini is an exception to this tendency. A leading scholar on the early history of moving pictures, he has striven for years to bring this collection to fruition. Well, the eagerly anticipated publication of Italian Silent Cinema: A Reader has finally arrived, and it does not disappoint. Italian Bookshelf aesthetic, and political developments of the seventh art. Thirty essays organized around seven subject-areas attest to the impressive scope of the project and counter the reductive representation of a period that cinematic histories tend to gloss over.

Moreover, these essays, by both internationally renowned experts and newly established scholars, engage in a behind-the-scenes dialogue in which national colors inform, but defer to a shared deference for the silver screen. The next four sections constitute the core of the study as it pertains to both Italian film culture and geographic specificity. Pragmatically, it specifies pertinent information on where to find Italian silent films Blom and on how to access non-filmic materials Mazzei.

The extensive listings of sources and reference works along with a bibliographic appendix and detailed indices also provide generous guidance for future research. Notwithstanding the consistently high quality of the research, the volume retains an accessibility all too rare, though most welcome, in contemporary scholarship. The contributors draw on archival materials, provide historical contextualization, and engage in theoretically informed analyses that challenge a national approach to a transnational medium.

Each essay rarely does a chapter exceed ten pages is concise and lucid in its exposition. Such brevity facilitates the incorporation of these materials into Italian film studies courses that too often dismiss the pre- talkie era with a quasi-silent nod to historical epics and little else. The compelling presentation of the volume is certainly enhanced by its visual appeal — well over images grace its pages.

While the illustrations do bestow a necessary visibility to a bygone era, they also inform and complement the analyses. The end result is that Italian Silent Cinema: A Reader makes an indispensable critical and historical contribution to film studies in and beyond the Italian context. In this essay, which is inspired by the outcome of a doctoral research, Emma Bond proposes to analyse from a clearly psychoanalytic perspective some of the most representative prose texts by Italo Svevo, Giorgio Pressburger and Giuliana Morandini.

Drawing on the recent ideas of Julia Kristeva, who overtly refers to Freudian and Lacanian concepts, Bond focuses on those elements and phenomena which escape conscious control and which are rendered via subversive narrative techniques. Italian Bookshelf and Morandini, have interwoven traces, symptoms, and signs related to physical illness which are mirror elements of mental suffering. Illness, Silence and Identity in Svevo, Pressburger and Morandini starts from the assumption that illness can be defined as the trigger that allows something to be revealed to the sufferer himself or herself.

A pre- or extralinguistic element disrupts semiotic processes, which cannot be captured in language. The writing on that illness is not only the enactment of the inner struggle, it enhances the recovery of the problematic past of the characters. Therefore, Bond considers as mandatory the unraveling of the narrative plotting process , as intended by Peter Brooks in his Reading for the Plot: New York, Knopf, Her detailed, well-structured, and chronological analyses show how male and female characters deal differently with their own illnesses, or struggles, or the ones of others.

Revelatory in this respect is female illness as a sign of death but also of desire. Both signs become intertwined in a destructive dialectic of repression. The plotting of the illness is communicated through a narrating voice which tends to conceal its identity — think of the use of initials or false names — or to hide behind other characters to the extent that Zeno becomes the unreliable narrative instance par excellence.

The latter seem to handle poorly their symptoms, such as the progressive loss of speech, the incapacity to hold on to an almost maniacal dependency on order, and the ambiguous fascination with the void. The logocentricity of male characters contrasts with the tendency to silence of the female characters. Within the suffering of the latter, silence has a potential for generating meaning, whereas the failure of language of the male characters the desemantization, for instance contaminates the narrative itself. Italian Bookshelf so-called exile in his writings illustrates clearly the otherness in and of displacement.

Female characters take their own space with them, forging a link between vocal and bodily expression. This process results in an acceptance of the dialectic between semiotic and symbolic spheres. Illness, Silence and Identity in Svevo, Pressburger and Morandini presents insightful findings based on a very representative selection of works by Svevo, Pressburger, and Morandini. It is not clear why she chose these three particular authors for her research, and some fundamental references in the two-fold bibliography are missing.

Figures in Italian Migration Literature. Hybridity in Italian Colonial and Postcolonial Cultures; ed. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, ; In this monograph, she continues to examine Italian migration literature, namely, published narratives authored in Italian by migrant writers from the s to the present. The eight authors and associated novels she focuses on are: This is a departure from many other studies, which focus on how these novels describe the phenomenon of immigration and its consequences for Italian society.

The body of the book is divided into five chapters: In the first chapter, Burns examines the ongoing process of identity formation present in novels by Methnani and Fortunato, Tawfik, and Fazel. The second chapter utilizes memory studies to look at the tension between remembering and forgetting, present in examples of narrative memory. These works, written in Italian, also take on a performative function, as they not only tell the histories and cultures of other places, but also introduce them to an Italian audience and place them in dialogue with contemporary Italian culture.

Italian Bookshelf protagonist of Lontano da Mogadiscio acknowledges her inability to be at home in any one space, suggesting that the sense of being at home involves frequent renegotiation between different spaces. The fourth chapter looks at the relationships migrants form with places — generally real, named locations — and spaces — more indefinite or imagined areas — as they move through them.

Throughout, she argues that migration literature is particularly suited to destabilizing the image of the Italian city as fixed and steeped in history through the figure of the migrant, who is both a city inhabitant and an outsider. The last chapter begins by examining the role of writing and books within migrant narratives and then turns to the field of Italian migration literature itself and possible comparisons with magical realism, postcolonial literature, and resistance literature.

Overall, this monograph successfully demonstrates the value of examining works of Italian migration literature, not just within the context of Italian society and Italian literature, but as examples of interactions between different cultures, histories, and spaces, which is apparent both within the narratives and in the publication and circulation of the novels themselves. Italian Women Filmmakers and the Gendered Screen.

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Italian Bookshelf spazio rimasto per troppo tempo scoperto. La selezione degli interventi non segue altro tipo di categorizzazione tematica, geografica, ecc. Italian Bookshelf intervento discute la figura di Pasqualino attraverso la lente dei gender studies e delle teorie di Judith Butler. La seconda parte della raccolta offre interessanti ed inedite interviste ad alcune protagoniste del cinema italiano contemporaneo.

Palazzeschi, Govoni e Boine. Capello si sofferma sui sonetti del Vas luxuriae, un gruppo di componimenti erotici rimossi dalle Fiale. Fictions of appetite alimentary discourses in Italian modernist literature. More specifically, it aims to research their aesthetic significance in the works produced by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Aldo Palazzeschi, Massimo Bontempelli, Paola Masino, and Luigi Pirandello, between and It is essential to point out the importance of the historical context chosen by the author, a period of time considered by many scholars to be associated with modernism.

By analyzing Le Roi Bombance, the author takes into account its bodily and consumption metaphors, and is thus able to reveal how they intertwine the gastronomical and sociopolitical sides of the play. With the following section of the same chapter, the author is able to underscore how the text is revelatory of the rhetoric of hygienism, and consequently of eugenics. Interestingly enough, the very end of the chapter dedicated to Marinetti centers on the poorly known Patriottismo insetticida. In this section, food and consumption are considered by the opposite pespective of cannibalism, although not exclusively.

The second chapter of Fictions of Appetite focuses on Aldo Palazzeschi, and more specifically on his novels, namely,: While analyzing comparatively the almost homonymous works by Masina and Bontempelli, Cesaretti focuses on the representation of appetite in these two authors, with a particular attention given to their relationship with creativity and gender. Ultimately, considering the opposite sides of productivity against sterility, the author suggests that Nascita could also be interpreted as an allegorical representation of creation and the difficulties related to the creative act.

Within this context, Pirandello offers an interesting point of view of breastfeeding as a reflection of the fascist biological political agenda. Because of this effective critical approach, Cesaretti underscores effectively some fascinating recurring features of the period and works under scrutiny and their interactions with the body, such as its potential, its devouring or self-limiting patterns, as well as its increasing importance as an object of commodification.

On a similar note, by using the same critical approach, the author has been able to point out some of the issues related to a feminine body, exposed to the paradox of being both a producer and a consumer within this commodified environment. Literature, Ideology and the Avant-Garde. A tre anni dalla scomparsa di Edoardo Sanguineti, Paolo Chirumbolo e John Picchione propongono questo interessantissimo volume dedicato al poeta genovese.

Encyclopedia

Theoretical Debate and Poetic Practices UT Press , il primo studio capace veramente di prendere per mano chi si affacciasse per la prima volta sul mondo dello sperimentalismo italiano degli anni Sessanta. Italian Bookshelf fino alla morte, ha lasciato un fondamentale lascito anche come romanziere, commediografo, critico letterario, teorico e traduttore. Scritture di viaggio e sguardi di lontano nel Novecento italiano. Nel primo, De Marco individua con precisione e finezza le suggestioni evocate dalle prose ungarettiane La rosa di Pesto e Viaggetto in Etruria, intimamente connesse alla produzione lirica del poeta.

Con grande acutezza, ne puntualizza la funzione di raccordo con la produzione poetica, in Viaggetto in Etruria: Lungi dal costruire una guida turistica, egli, per esempio, descrive le bellezze paesaggistiche, —artistico,architettoniche, esprimendo un autentico concetto di arte, simile a quello di un suo interlocutore, il professor Pane: Italian Bookshelf Gloria De Vincenti. Il genio del secondo futurismo fiorentino tra macchina e spirito.

Il secondo futurismo fiorentino riponeva nella scienza e nella sua dimensione logica un ruolo fondamentale nella produzione artistica. La dimensione onirica, quindi, era considerata dai membri del gruppo un fondamento del processo creativo. Italian Bookshelf secondo futurismo fiorentino eludendo la comune interpretazione di gruppo esclusivamente magico-occultistico, non in dialogo con il culto della macchina.

The Poetry of Nino De Vita. Many of their lives are chronicles of hardship, yet they exhibit admirable resiliency, stoic endurance, and a fierce will to survive. A supper consisting of snails was still on the stove. Asserting that he carries his wife in his heart, he bows his head and sucks in his shoulders, in a gesture that sums up his acceptance of the tragedy of human life. Italian Bookshelf Another character, the young Bbinirittedda, becomes victim of a botched abortion because of her realization that society would never forgive her transgression.

All poems of this collection serve to weave a rich tapestry of colorful and unforgettable characters.

Religioni e Filantropia nel Mediterraneo: Tradizioni, Simboli e Iconografie by Baskerville - Issuu

In his introduction, Cipolla singles out Carbone as one of the chief promoters of the Sicilian language in Sicily, sponsoring recitals and using it as his main poetic vehicle. Carbone shares with Sciascia a commitment to the improvement of society, but unlike his famous compatriot Carbone does not lash out harshly, but employs subtle irony. To draw a parallel, Sciascia is to Juvenal as Carbone is to Horace. To give an example, the assassination of Judge Falcone, his young bride and his escort on their way from Palermo airport to the city does not draw from Carbone a thundering cry of condemnation, but the following subdued comment: The muted bitterness of the final line is more effective than a grandstand indictment of the mafia could have ever been.

Carbone deals with other problems, both old and new: Italian Bookshelf Chiara Ferrari. Chapter 1 focuses on three speeches delivered by Mussolini at crucial moments: Italian Bookshelf in a way that forged direct contact with the people, while supporting collaboration among social classes in the attainment of national goals. In Chapters 3 and 4, Ferrari analyzes selected literary and non-literary texts by Gadda and Vittorini, two writers who, while not explicitly fascist, were initially sympathetic to the regime.

Ferrari posits that sacrificial rhetoric and the mechanisms of integrating the Italian people into emerging mass society played a key role in the works of both writers, despite their differences. Theoretically rigorous and replete with intriguing textual analyses, The Rhetoric of Violence and Sacrifice in Fascist Italy. Italian Bookshelf assessment of fascist sacrificial discursive rhetoric during the ventennio and in the postwar years. Rozier, University of Arkansas Daniela Gioseffi. Pioneering Italian American Culture. Escaping La Vita della Cucina. Tuttavia, Gioseffi non ha esitato a rendere note spiacevoli ingiustizie subite dagli italo-americani, come nel caso del suo poema portato nei teatri: Secondo Gioseffi, il fatto che siano italo-americane costituisce un elemento imprescindibile che le ha orientate a prendersi cura di se stesse e della famiglia in modo del tutto distintivo.

Questo volume fa emergere con forza non soltanto la passione intellettuale che ha contraddistinto gli interventi di Gioseffi nella vita pubblica americana sia in termini intellettuali che in termini concreti, ma anche la ricchezza di risorse che Gioseffi mette a disposizione dei lettori. I saggi, le recensioni, le interviste si presentano come un valido punto di riferimento per coloro che studiano la letteratura italo-americana, come anche per coloro che vogliono per la prima volta entrare nel vivo di un ambito culturale non privo di sfumature e chiaroscuri che Gioseffi ha saputo sapientemente mettere in evidenza.

Un Nuovo Cinema Politico Italiano? Lavoro, Migrazione, Relazioni di Genere. Italian Bookshelf sarebbe interessante se il prossimo volume riuscisse ad affrontare. In altre circostanze ci si trova dinanzi ad antologie di memorialistica che probabilmente offrono un contributo alla comprensione della dimensione lesbica, gay, bisessuale, transessuale LGBT solo se si circoscrive il tema a un contesto etnico ben preciso e limitato. Italian Bookshelf cultured, creative, white-collar, and high-class.

Dispiace anche notare la totale mancanza, in questa raccolta, di voci bisessuali e transessuali. Aspetto questo purtroppo trascurato, che fa scrivere a Frank Anthony Polito: Could a name possibly get any more Italian than that? E verrebbe da glossare: Actually, it sure can! Italian Bookshelf introduzione da parte dei curatori. Inglese, internazionalizzazione, politica linguistica.

Is it right to do so? These questions are at the core of an ongoing debate within Italian academic circles. This debate was touched off by the recent announcement by the provost of the Politecnico di Milano that courses for engineers and architects would be offered in English. In an attempt to frame the nature of the debate surrounding the use of English in Italian universities, the prestigious Accademia della Crusca a research center dedicated to Italian studies was inspired to create this book. In it are letters and short essays on this topic by writers, university professors, teachers, and researchers from many fields including science, law, and language and literature.

Most of the contributers to the book are Italian; a few are from other European countries. Italian Bookshelf The essays in the book are loosely organized into sections. The third and fourth sections of the book offer the opinions of other intellectuals. The essays look at different ways to conceive of the university, the constitutionality of a decision that excludes the official language of the country, and the public, social, and cultural use of English in relation to its scientific, and humanistic use in research and dissemination of research worldwide.

They consider which subjects should be taught in English, and why English alone would be the alternate language. In that light they also ask which of the world languages will be dominant in the future, and bemoan an absence of strategic vision on the part of Italian university administrators and educators. It is impossible to summarize everything that is discussed in this book.

The overarching topic is timely and interesting; the book itself pages in length offers such a variety of tone and writing style that it does not seem intended to be read in one sitting. Instead, it is useful to peruse from time to time, allowing readers to select one subtopic or another as needed. In this light it would have been helpful if the subtopics had been better organized. For the first time, The Emergence of Pottery in West Asia examines in detail the when, where, how and why of the arrival of the first pottery in the region.

A key insight that emerges is that we must not confuse the reasons for pottery adoption with the long-term consequences. Neolithic peoples in West Asia did not adopt pottery because of the many uses and functions it would gain many centuries later and the development of ceramic technology needs to be examined in the context of its original cultural and social milieu. Keilschrifttexte aus Assur literarischen Inhalts 7 , Wiesbaden: Der Band stellt 65 babylonisch-assyrische Keilschrifttexte mit Beschreibungen solcher Rituale und Gebeten vor: Die genaue Fundstelle innerhalb der Stadt ist leider oft nicht mehr zu ermitteln.

In the course of the ritual, the victim of witchcraft is transferred from a state of imminent death back to life; he is purified and his bound state undone. The witches are assigned the fate they had intended for their victim by sending the witchcraft back to them. The book consists of three parts: This study depends on abundant Neo-Sumerian textual data c.

Through a statistical analysis of text formulary and written documentation, it also contributes to the understanding of ancient Mesopotamian bookkeeping. Famine as the Curse of Kings: A Voice from Across the Jordan: Royal self-depiction and legitimation of authority in the Levantine monarchies of the Iron Age in light of newly excavated royal sculptures at Tell Tayinat.

Dem Siegelkatalog vorangestellt sind kurze einleitende Kapitel zur Siegelpraxis sowie zur Stil- und Motiventwicklung. La figura del re di Uruk ha superato i confini della Mesopotamia per entrare nelle letterature di popoli come gli Hittiti, gli Elamit e gli Aramei. Strommenger, Archaische Wagen in Vorderasien und Indien: Bauweise und Nutzung , Berlin: Die Autoren dokumentieren die ersten Wagenkonstruktionen und deren geografisches und kulturelles Umfeld. Dabei betrachten sie unterschiedliche Fahrzeugtypen Hakenwagen, Deichselbockwagen u. Die Funktion der Wagen im Alltagsleben wird dargestellt, insbesondere der Gebrauch in kultischen Handlungen.

Alle Objekte werden typologisiert und hinsichtlich ihrer zeitlichen Stellung und ihrer Herkunft eingeordnet. Im Verlauf des 3. Neolithic ceramics - pottery - early ceramic traditions - — BC - late Neolithic pottery - production - evolution - distribution - technology - paint - painting - raw materials - decoration - social significance - Sitz im Leben - social context - networks. Archaeologists have recently made tremendous advances in understanding the early ceramic traditions of the prehistoric Near East.

Over the past decade there has been a huge increase in research focusing on various aspects of ceramic production, its origins and evolution, distribution and consumption in the Late Neolithic ca. Fieldwork brings new and exciting finds every year while laboratory studies change our perspectives regarding ceramic technology. Near Eastern ceramic specialists actively engage with, and contribute to, current trends in theoretical archaeology. For the first time, the 19 papers presented here bring together specialists discussing Neolithic ceramics from the Near East in the broadest sense.

There is a general focus on decorated pottery traditions. What raw materials and ceramic technologies did Late Neolithic peoples employ? How did they paint their designs? How may we analyze decorated ceramics to explore social networks and identities? What did these decorated pottery traditions mean socially? Essential reading to Near Eastern prehistorians, these collected papers provide new insights for anyone interested in the development of early pottery traditions and the social significance of ceramics in Neolithic societies. Fondation assyriologique Georges Dossin, Sippar - Old Babylonian period - Ur-Utu archive - mail - incomin - outgoing - copies - letters - gender - women - Ancient Near Eastern studies - divine epiphanies.

Bibliography , ; Battini, L. Some Considerations, ; Watson, W. The Assyriological and Semitistic Reviews are the following: Indo-European Studies presented to James P. Walter de Gruyter, But while our knowledge of the latter kingdoms has made huge progress in the last decades, the Kassites have until recently been largely ignored by modern scholarship. Recently a number of scholars have embarked on research into different aspects of Late Bronze Age Babylonia. The desire to share the results of these new investigations resulted in an international conference, which was held at Munich University in July The presentations given at this meeting have been revised for publication in the current volume.

This book gives an overview of current research on the Kassites and is the first larger survey of their culture ever. An invaluable introduction by Kassite expert Professor John A. Brinkman is followed by seventeen specialist contributions investigating different aspects of the Kassites. These include detailed historical, social, cultural, archaeological, and art historical studies concerning the Kassites from their first arrival in Mesopotamia, during the period when a Kassite Dynasty ruled Babylonia c. Concentrating on southern Mesopotamia the contributions also discuss Kassite relations and presence in neighboring regions.

The book is completed by a substantial bibliography and a detailed index table of content volume 1 table of content volume 2. The internal stability and cohesion of the Neo-Assyrian Empire to a very considerable degree rested on the public image of the King as an omnipotent earthly representative of God. Many elaborate rituals were designed and performed in order to promote this image and firmly implant it in the minds of the king's subjects, vassals and enemies. The present volume is a critical edition of all currently known Assyrian royal rituals and related cultic texts written in the Neo-Assyrian language.

Many of these texts are previously unpublished or inadequately edited, and very few of them have been previously translated into English. They constitute an extremely important source for the study of Assyrian religion, cult and royal ideology and ancient Near Eastern religion and cult in general. It anchors the site in the dimensions of time and space by bringing together specialists to present studies on the effects of commercial and cultural interaction in a broad chronological and geographical perspective. Focus is on the period BCE when Central Anatolia was divided into dozens of densely populated microstates, each centred on an individual urban and palatial institution, but connected through a shared linguistic, material and religious horizon.

Tying together this competitive system of peer polities was also a complex network of commercial exchange operated by local and foreign merchants working in and beyond the region. A Representation of the God Assur? Seals, Chronology and History; website. This work is based on a woman''s archive, which is worthy of interest and quite unparalleled in the cuneiform documentation available so far. Iltani archive, dated to some years after the destruction of the Mari palace, is the major epigraphic source for the period and the region; it gives some - admittedly local - information about a period for which the documentation was lacking.

A new edition of Iltani's archive was made possible thanks to my photographies of Iltani's tablets. They are the base of this thesis which highlights the characteristic features of this documentation. This thesis gives us a better knowledge of Iltani and her entourage, clarifies some aspects of their life and of the history of the kingdom they were living in. Another interest of this study is the description of the daily life of a high rank woman from Upper Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian period, which helps to improve our understanding of the place of women in that society.

Caucasus - Anatolia - archaeology - relations - Ancient Near East - 5th millenium BC - 1st millenium BC Eurasian steppes - surveys - chronology - economy - social organisation - technology - trade - long-distance trade - raw materials - artefacts - archaeometallurgy - landscape archaeology. The volume covers a wide chronological span - from the late 5th to the early 1st millennium BC, and includes contributions about a wide range of topics reports of archaeological excavations and surveys, chronology, economy, social organisation of the ancient populations, technology, long-distance exchange of raw materials and artefacts, archaeometallurgy, landscape archaeology, etc.

According to the most recent developments of research, these are investigated in a remarkably interdisciplinary perspective. The participation to the conference of well-recognised experts working not only in different countries of the Southern Caucasus and in Anatolia in present-day Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey but also in the North-Caucasian republics of the present-day Russian Federation offered a rare opportunity to compare and discuss recent trends of archaeological research in these different regions.

Therefore, this volume represents a fundamental contribution to both Near Eastern and Caucasian Archaeology. In doing so, the author uses archaeological excavations, surveys, and textual evidence from both Urartian and Assyrian sources, as well as original ethnographic observations, within the context of the geographical setting of the Urartu Kingdom. This book investigates various aspects of the Urartian Kingdom from its economic resources and the movement of commodities agriculture, animal husbandry, metallurgy, trade, etc. Sixteen contributions on cultural history, archaeological and textual remains of the Ancient Near East are devoted to the Assyriologist F.

Dining and drinking in ritual, ceremonial and everyday contexts are considered. Black dogs and Seven demons are given attention, as well as Babylonian whirlwinds, Assyrian crown princes and the origin of maps. Johannes Friedrich; Annelies Kammenhuber. Using intertextual parallels and comparison with similar works in other literatures, he espouses a new classification of the Babylonian disputation poems as parodies.

After examining neighbouring traditions of literary disputation, he argues that the Babylonian poems influenced them, and that some may have been translated from Akkadian to Aramaic, from Aramaic and Syriac to Arabic. In addition, The Babylonian Disputation Poems provides editions of several previously unpublished Babylonian disputations, such as Palm and Vine and the Series of the Spider. The emergence of urbanism in Iraq occurred under the distinctive climatic conditions of the Mesopotamian plain; rainy winters and extremely hot summers profoundly affected the formation and development of these early cities.

Sunlight and Shade in the First Cities explores the relationship between society, culture and lived experience through the way in which sunlight was manipulated in the urban built environment. Light is approached as both a physical phenomenon, which affects comfort and the practical usability of space, and as a symbol rich in social and religious meaning. Through the reconstruction of ancient urban light environments, to the extent possible from the archaeological remains, the location, the timing, and meaning of activities within early Mesopotamian cities become accessible. Sunlight is shown to have influenced the formation and symbolism of urban architecture and shaped the sensory experience of urban life.

From cities as part of the sunlit landscape, this work progresses to consider city forms as a whole and then to the examination of architectural types; residential, sacred and palatial. Architectural analysis is complemented by analysis of contemporary textual sources, along with iconographic and artefactual evidence. The cities under detailed examination are limited to those on the Mesopotamian plain, focusing on the Early Dynastic periods up to the end of the second millennium BC. This volume demonstrates the utility of light as a tool with which to analyze, not just ancient Mesopotamian settlements, but the built environment of any past society, especially where provision of, or protection from sunlight critically affects life.

The active influence of sunlight is demonstrated within Mesopotamian cities at every scale of analysis. Oxford University Press, This is a major re-evaluation of the life and legacy of Gertrude Lowthian Bell , the renowned scholar, explorer, writer, archaeologist, and British civil servant.

The book examines Gertrude Bell's role in shaping British policy in the Middle East in the first part of the 20th century, her views of the cultures and peoples of the region, and her unusual position as a woman occupying a senior position in the British imperial administration. It focuses particularly on her involvement in Iraq and the part she played in the establishment of the Iraqi monarchy and the Iraqi state. In addition, the book examines her interests in Iraq's ancient past.

She was instrumental in drawing up Iraq's first Antiquities Law in and in the foundation of the Iraq Museum in Gertrude Bell refused to be constrained by the expectations of the day, and was able to succeed in a man's world of high politics and diplomacy. She remains a controversial figure, however, especially in the context of the founding of the modern state of Iraq. Does she represent a more innocent age when the country was born out of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, or does she personify the attitudes and decisions that have created today's divided Middle East?

The volume's authors bring new insights to these questions. A Multidisciplinary View , Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter, GmbH, The present volume comprises 6 highly original studies on material text cultures in different nontypographic societies stretching from the 3rd millennium cuneiform textual record of Ancient Mesopotamia to 20th century Qur'anic boards of northern and central African provenience.

It provides a multidisciplinary approach to material text cultures complementary to the interdisciplinary, strongly theory-grounded research scheme of the CRC Six research fellowships were awarded to outstanding young researchers for innovative, high-risk research proposals pertinent to the CRC 's overall research scheme. Their studies contained in this volume add multidisciplinary dimension to material text culture research, satisfy the curiosity as to the applicability of the theoretical premises and methodology developed and tested by the CRC to research on inscribed artefacts carried out on an international level and in different research environments and contribute to anchoring material text culture research as proposed by the CRC within the tradition and broader context of other research strategies devoted to the material dimension of writing, such as the filologia materiale.

Judean merchants - Judah - Babylonia - social networks - business activities - 6th century BC - Babylonian society - integration - long-distance trade - travelling - distances - Iran - transport - connections. This article focuses on Judean merchants in Babylonia, their social networks, and their business activities in the sixth century BCE. I argue that these people were integrated into the commercial sphere of Babylonian society and that they had native Babylonian merchants as well as traders of foreign origin among their acquaintances.

Judeans participated in Babylonian long-distance trade, and documented evidence shows that some of them travelled as far as Iran for the purpose of trading. Furthermore, because travelling and the transportation of goods are an integral part of commercial activity, merchants provide an example of people who could have maintained connections between Judeans living in Judah and Babylonia.

American Schools of Oriental Research, Jay Crisostomo, ; Richardson, S. Iltani and the DUMU. Journal of Western Asiatic Studies , vol. Rivista di storia, ambienti e culture del Vicino Oriente Antico , vol. ZAR 22, , A recent comprehensive survey of the ancient Near Eastern law, edited by the late Raymond Westbrook , immediately shows the richness of cuneiform legal sources. It also brings into attention the areas that are yet to be studied. The present study will attempt to study fraud and forgery i.

Fraud when it is not accompanied by forgery will be studied in a second paper. Assur - Middle Assyrian period - 14th century - family archive - history of research. Die Publikation widmet sich genau dieser Frage. Their Survival and Destruction , Leiden, Boston: An epilogue assesses the impact of the recent civil war on the state of the monuments, and strategies for their resurrection, with plentiful references and web links.

Hisada, Ancient West Asian civilization: Clash of Civilizations - Europe - Asia - West Asia - 10th millenium BC - 1st millenium BC - West Asian Civilisations - Middle East - Eurocentric - agriculture - metallurgy - archaeology - philology - climate - geology - wheat cultivation - animal domestication - metallurgy - urbanisation - writing - religious traditions - cultural heritage - common background.

This book explores aspects of the ancient civilization in West Asia, which has had a great impact on modern human society—agriculture, metallurgy, cities, writing, regional states, and monotheism, all of which appeared first in West Asia during the tenth to first millennia BC. The editors specifically use the term "West Asia" since the "Middle East" is seen as an Eurocentric term. By using this term, the book hopes to mitigate potential bias i. However, the "West Asia" region is identical to that of the narrower "Middle East," which encompasses modern Iran and Turkey from east to west and Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula from north to south.

Scrutinizing subjects such as the relations between climate, geology and human activities, the origins of wheat cultivation and animal domestication, the development of metallurgy, the birth of urbanization and writing, ancient religious traditions, as well as the treatment of cultural heritage, the book undertakes a comprehensive analysis of West Asian Civilization that provided the common background to cultures in various areas of the globe, including Europe and Asia. These contributions will attempt to demonstrate a fresh vision which emphasizes the common cultural origin between Europe and West Asia, standing in opposition to the global antagonism symbolized by the theory of "Clash of Civilizations.

Aryans - migration - nomads - Persians - Iranians - Achaemenid empire - war - urbanisation - roads - irrigation - technology. During the first and second millennia BC large numbers of nomadic people known as the Aryans migrated outwards into the Eurasian periphery from Central Asia. One particular branch of these Aryans moved south of the Caspian Sea and became known to history as the Persians or Iranians.

Their first dwellings were in an unpromisingly arid area, but from there these early settlers would go on to form one of the most powerful empires in history. The Persians tells the captivating story of this beguiling ancient civilization. The book describes the difficulties early Persians encountered and how these contributed to their unique character and the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire. It recounts the keenly fought conflicts with the Greeks for mastery of the Eastern Mediterranean, a contest which was to dominate the geopolitics of the ancient world, and it paints a vivid picture of the many great Persian cities and their spectacular achievements: Providing an entertaining insight into the influence, traditions and history of ancient Persia, the book shows how the uniqueness of modern Iran in the Islamic world owes much to its ancient civilization.

Backed by an unparalleled military force, Sargon II outwitted and outfought powerful competitors to extend Assyrian territory and secure his throne. Under his leadership, skilled chariotry, cavalry, and infantry excelled in all types of terrain against an array of culturally diverse enemies. This book represents the first in-depth military study of the great Assyrian king. Contrary to the stereotype of the brutal Assyrian despot, Sargon applied force selectively, with deliberate economy, and as only one of several possible ways to deal with external threat or to exploit opportunity.

The Campaigns of Sargon II demonstrates how Sargon changed the geopolitical dynamics in the Near East, inspired a period of cultural florescence, established long-lasting Assyrian supremacy, and became one of the most influential kings of the ancient world. Stepniowski, Ausgrabungen in Assur: Wohnquartiere in der Weststadt, Teil I. Assur - excavation -campaigns - - - - history - W-1 - living quarter - residential area - small objects - 7th century BC - Parthian period- architecture - graves - tombs - skeletons - grave architecture - Parthian graves - late Assyrian cuneiform archives - domestic houses - cuneiform - tablets - Neo Assyrian clay amulets - photographies - urban maps.

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird der Abschnitt W-1 vorgestellt. Die Kleinfunde und die Tontafeln stammen aus dem 7. Die Publikation beginnt mit einer detaillierten Beschreibung der Architekturbefunde, Installationen und Artefakte aus den Kampagnen , und Kap. Es folgt eine zusammenfassende Beschreibung des Wohnquartiers und seiner Funde Kap. Die anthropologische Auswertung beinhaltet Analysen menschlicher Skelettreste aus den Grabungsabschnitten 1—3, die in den Jahren und ausgegraben wurden Kap.

Die auf den Tafeln in Umzeichnungen abgebildeten Kleinfunde Taf. Die Auswahl von Fotoaufnahmen 72—92 ist hingegen nach verschiedenen Fundgruppen geordnet. Tigris - upper Tigris region - Anatolia - Mesopotamia - Hirbemerdon Tepe - archaeological phases - settlement - from the 4th millenium BC -material culture - history - sociocultural landscape - inhabitants - population - social structure - social groups. During the 10 years of archaeological work performed at the site 11 archaeological phases were recorded starting from the fourth millennium BC until the XIXth century AD. This volume represents the final report on the studies of the material culture belonging to this long chronological sequence that was unearthed during the excavations and aims at allowing the interested scholars at reconstructing the history of the settlement as well as a broader sociocultural landscape that involved other social groups inhabiting the upper Tigris region as well as other Anatolian and Mesopotamian regions.

British School of Archaeology in Iraq, Jeffery John Orchard - livestock - accounting - Sealand I. Middle Assyrian - geography - toponyms - 2nd millenium BC - historical geography. Mithilfe von elektronischer Datenverarbeitung werden die verschiedenen Datengruppen vernetzt und neue Formen der geoinformatischen und semantischen Modellierung erprobt.

Luwian hieroglyphic inscriptions from the excavations , Bologna: They are presented together with an extensive catalog on the content of the texts and indexes of geographical names, names of gods and persons, as well as a list of the annual eponyms mentioned in the documents. The texts are mainly administrative documents related to the palace.

They concern deliveries of and to the palace or contracts for work and services. Therefore, the documents published here complete our information on the royal palace administration. The Amarna letters from Canaan offer us a unique glimpse of the historical and linguistic panorama of the Levant in the middle of the fourteenth century BCE. Their evidence regarding verbs is crucial for the historical and comparative study of the Semitic languages. Proper evaluation of this evidence requires an understanding of its scribal origin and nature.

For this reason, The Verb in the Amarna Letters from Canaan addresses the historical circumstances in which the linguistic code of the letters was born and the unique characteristics of this system. The author adduces second-language acquisition as a proper framework for understanding the development of this language by scribes who were educated in centers on the cuneiform periphery. In this way, the book advances a novel interpretation: This vision of the linguistic system of the letters as the learners' interlanguage informs the main part of the book, which is devoted to verbal morphology and semantics.

The chapter on morphology offers an overview of conjugation patterns and morphemes in terms of paradigms. Employing a variationist approach, it also analyzes the bases on which the verbal forms were constructed. Next, the individual uses of each form are illustrated by numerous examples that provide readers with a basis for discovering alternative interpretations. The systemic view of each form and the various insights that permeate this book provide invaluable data for the historical and comparative study of the West Semitic verbal system, particularly of ancient Hebrew, Ugaritic, and Arabic.

Akkadian - love literature - amatory corpus - 3rd millenium BC - 2nd millenium BC - love - sex - Ancient Near East - translation - edition philological commentary - hymns - love incantations - refusing lover - sexual power - metaphors - lovemaking - sexual climax - anatomy - sexual organs. More than 30 cuneiform texts including two hitherto unpublished compositions are carefully edited and translated, accompanied by a thorough philological commentary: The style of the Akkadian amatory corpus and its key-metaphors and images are discussed, the way Akkadian describes lovemaking, copulation and sexual climax is presented, and the terms used in Akkadian literature for sexual organs are outlined.

Parallels to other literary bodies of ancient love lyrics can also be found. Editore Ulrico Hoepli, Basato su una solida impostazione scientifica e una consolidata esperienza di insegnamento, questo volume presenta per la prima volta in Italia a un pubblico vasto la grammatica di una lingua orientale ormai estinta da millenni: The Evil Eye is mentioned repeatedly throughout the Old Testament, Israel's parabiblical writings, and New Testament, with a variety of terms and expressions.

The Old Testament Greek Septuagint contains no less than fourteen text segments involving some twenty explicit references to the Evil Eye Deut At least three further texts are also likely implied references to an Evil Eye 1 Sam 2: Evil Eye belief and practice continued in the early Jesus movement.

Jesus mentions the Evil Eye on more than one occasion Matt 6: Paul makes explicit and implicit mention of the Evil Eye in his letter to the Galatians 3: Possible implicit references to the Evil Eye are also examined. The numerous references to the Evil Eye in Israel's rabbinic writings and those of postbiblical Christianity second-sixth centuries CE , together with the material evidence from this period, are examined in volume 4. The principal goal of the annual is to reveal the inherent relationship between Assyriology, Semitics, and biblical studies—a relationship that our predecessors comprehended and fruitfully explored but that is often neglected today.

The title Babel und Bibel is intended to point to the possibility of fruitful collaboration among the three disciplines, in an effort to explore the various civilizations of the ancient Near East. This volume includes as a major portion of its contents selected papers from the 6th Biannual Meeting of the International Association for Comparative Semitics.

Deutsche Orient Gesellschaft e. Mouton ; Libri ad Directionem missi, ; Bibliographiae: IV , ; Res Bibliographicae: Sennacherib, soon after becoming king in BC, moved the administrative capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire to Niniveh. He commenced a gigantic project of enlarging the city and remodelling the defenses, environs and surrounding countryside.

As a result his new city-wall, while diminished by natural processes of erosion and human activity, remained conspicuous into the twenty-first century AD. The relationships between the gates and the roads through them become clearer, and it is easier to integrate the remains of urban Niniveh with the geomorphological evidence now available for the Assyrian landscape e. The unfortunately highly fragmentary state of the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III, which have been recently re-edited in RINAP 1, leaves a number of unanswered, and so far unanswerable questions on this crucial phase of the Neo-Assyrian history.

The present article, developed from a review of the RINAP volume, simply attempts to figure out how the message of the inscriptions can be framed in the communicative context of the time. Stratigraphy, Architecture, Material Culture , Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider, Sumhuram - shrine - Sn - Oman - Arabian Peninsula - Dhofar - residential quarter - architecture - South Arabian culture - indigenous culture - incense burners.

After 20 years of research and excavation conducted by the Italian Mission to Oman, the ancient South Arabian port of Sumhuram, located along the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Omani Governorate of Dhofar, is known in many of its aspects.

The impressive surrounding walls encircle a town that included market places, stores, dwelling quarters, monumental buildings and temples. This book presents the precise report of the excavation of a small shrine located in the centre of the town, inside the residential quarter, and discusses its diachronic evolution which suggests a phasing that mirrors all the different periods of the city life.

The artifacts discovered during the excavation are illustrated, both in relation with their stratigraphic context and in a separated catalogue. A fruitful interaction between the South Arabian tradition and an indigenous substratum is reflected in these items, as well as in several architectural features. Among them, a few incense burners deserve special mention by virtue of their complex decoration and their uniqueness.

The shrine, likely dedicated to the moon god Sn, was undoubtedly a relevant place for the community life throughout the more than seven hundred years of its existence, as witnessed by the great effort invested in its reconstruction.

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• Ma part de pain suisse (FICTION) (French Edition).
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• The Unknown Heir (Mills & Boon Historical)!
• Recent Publications in Assyriology [CDLI Wiki].

As such, the shrine was chosen as the subject of the first new publication about Sumhuram to cover the more recent, as yet unpublished, work of the Italian Mission to Oman. Dalla luce all'arca , Acireale: Gruppo Editoriale Bonnano, Bible - reception - Ancient Near Eastern culture - mythology - deluge - flood - tower of Babel - paradise - Eden - Noah - ark. Vorrei partire dal principio e il principio di Genesi, lo sappiamo, riguarda la creazione del mondo. Ho messo accanto al testo, allora, degli excursus su argomenti che richiedono una trattazione particolare, ed alla fine, un po' per completare un po' per abbellire, una piccola scelta di "fonti" per chi voglia consultarle.

Stratigraphy and burial customs as well as material culture allow to draw comparisons with sites of this period. They additionally indicate a strong cultural continuity with the PPNB period. The investigations on the site were stopped by the international crisis of the s. On the basis of the last excavations conducted on the site by a French team, we discuss here this chronological attribution. The issue remains hard to solve because of the nature of the documentation.

However, an early date beginning of the Pottery Neolithic appears to be the only possibility for opening a wider debate on the neolithization of the Mesopotamian alluvial plain. Scattered elements are collected here in order to suggest the possibility of a local phenomenon. Late Chalcolithic sealing images and the challenges of urbanism in 4th millenium Mesopotamia, in: The Impact of Printing — London: London and New York: Gacek, Adam, Arabic Manuscripts: A Vademecum for Readers Leiden and Boston: The Technologizing of the Word London: Pedersen, Johannes, The Arabic Book, tr.

Geoffrey French Princeton, N. Montgomery London and New York: From the Aural to the Read, transl. Anatomy of the Hadith Transmission Network, — Stanford: Stanford University Press; In addition to addressing the texts themselves, the survey has included attention to patterns over time in the reproduction of works, and to paratexts such as transmission certificates and ownership notices.

Through detailed presentation of the latter, the article serves in a part as a methodological demonstration. It ends with a call for more complete integration of manuscript studies into the broader field of Islamic historical studies. It is often given as an artifact possessed of an aura of menace, something dangerous to have from a social, legal, or even soterial standpoint. Special thanks are due to my adviser Alexander Knysh for his patient support of my strange interests, and to many others. For such reasons books of magic are famously flammable as well, as countless literary and historical examples testify.

In Acts, the magicians of Ephesus burned their scrolls on magic before the apostle Paul as a sign of repentance for their sorcery,3 and in medieval Florence, the archbishop Antoninus is said to have seized a book of incantations which, when burned, put forth a thick cloud of dark smoke as a result of the multitude of demons residing therein. Equally important are the several essays on the subject by Pierre Lory, recently gathered in the volume La Science des lettres en islam. Rosenthal, The Muqaddimah, 3: Many of these scholars have discussed the manuscript corpus briefly, but their investigations of it have been rather limited in scope.

In a minority of cases where direct examination of the surrogates or codices was not possible, information has been drawn from catalogs and articles describing members of the corpus. In this paper these are utilized for evaluating the relative importance of texts during a given century, dating the appearance of certain texts, and assessing some social features of the spread of the corpus.

Certain weaknesses are inherent to these wide-angle methods insofar as the number and variety of surviving codices undoubtedly give an incomplete picture of the books that were in circulation and the actors involved, and the conclusions derived from them are liable to alternative interpretations, as well as to revision in the face of further data. I have found them good to think with nonetheless.

It is noteworthy that the teachings of all these men were intertwined with, or at least somehow implicated in the science of letters and other occult praxeis. The date of copying for the set is in the colophon of Noah Gardiner 91 This cluster of paratexts reveals at least two important points. The typical formula for an audition certificate is: See also footnotes 33, 34, and 36 below. It functioned as a means not only of transmitting works accurately, but also of ritually passing on the authority to teach and utilize their contents.

Noah Gardiner 93 century. Hic vir apud Mohamedanos non solum doctrina sed etiam pietate insignis perhibetur, eiusque sepulchrum religionis causa visitatur. Vulgo Sheikh Albouni illum appellant. Within these two works, references are made, in many cases repeatedly, to the three others in the group: As shown in the chart at the end of this paper, the five works comprise a closed inter-referential circuit, i. The majority of these references occur immediately after a somewhat gnomic statement on one esoteric topic or another, stating that the matter is explained in another of the five works.

Indeed, they are typically phrased in the first person, e. The science of letters permeates all of them to varying degrees, but instructions for making and using talismans are included in only two: Many of these early copies are high-quality codices in elegant Syro-Egyptian hands, with the text fully vocalized. For no other work in the corpus are there such disproportionate numbers of early copies over later ones. The works of the medieval corpus that remain to be discussed contain a good deal more material that can be characterized as occult-scientific with a practical bent, and also boast a greater numbers of surviving copies.

It is a point of interest that the two were sometimes conflated. The notion of three redactions has since been taken up by many modern scholars, beginning with a essay by Hans Winkler see bibliography. I have not seen Tunis MS , and cannot comment on its date or contents. I have no basis upon which to comment on the third, Tunis MS Furthermore, while the colophon indeed does appear to say , the possibility of this being accurate is obviated by an anecdote from mentioned in the text on fol.

The date is written in Hindi—Arabic numerals rather than spelled out in full, as is more common in colophons. Unless this was a particularly clumsy attempt to backdate a codex, it must be assumed to be either a slip of the pen or a peculiar regional letterform for the initial number, which should perhaps be read as an eight or a nine instead of a six. A physical inspection of the codex yields no indication that it is especially old. The text is copied in an Eastern hand, i.

The whole is a remarkable exposition of a cosmos inextricable from the letters of the alphabet and the divine names. As mentioned previously, the remaining three major medieval works are distinguished primarily by their omission from the inter-referential circuit that binds together the other five. The survey for this project found forty copies of the work, not all of them complete.

As with many of the other works, certain of these codices are professionally copied and fully vocalized, suggesting that the work was prized by some. It is in four parts: O my brother, know that the secrets of the letters cannot be apprehended by means of analogical reasoning, such as some of the sciences can be, but are realizable only through the mystery of providence, whether through something of the mysteries of inspiration, something of the mysteries of prophetic revelation, something of the mysteries of unveiling, or some [other] type of [divine] communication.

Whatever strays from these four categories is but self-deception, in which there is no benefit at all. BnF MS arabe , fol. A handful of these earliest codices are definitively located, e. One method of approaching these questions undertaken for this project has been the compilation of a rudimentary prosopography of the human actors auditors, copyists, owners, patrons, etc. There are serious limitations to this approach, insofar as many codices lack colophons, ownership statements, or other paratexts that would be of use in this regard, and because those actors who did leave traces in the corpus most often recorded only sparse information about themselves.

Nonetheless, the compilation of what data exist allows for the deduction of some compelling observations, especially when viewed in relation to literary evidence and other sources. In only a handful of statements did actors label themselves as adherents of a particular order.

As a number of recent studies have shown, in late medieval Egypt and Syria the spread and growing social influence of Sufism was facilitated to a significant degree by the championing and financial sponsorship of various individual Sufis and Sufi institutions by Turkish military elites i. For broader studies of the interactions of military elites and Arab scholars, Sufis, and bureaucrats, see the works by Chamberlain and Berkey listed in the bibliography. Noah Gardiner century can be regarded as one outgrowth of the embrace of these occult technologies by preceding rulers.

Noah Gardiner households. Rosenthal, The Muqaddimah, Noah Gardiner orbiting it. Another example, albeit a very late one, is two complete copies i. Of course, it is also quite possible that some scribes refused to do such work on religious grounds. Many scholars have noted multiple problems of coherence and consistency between the various chapters of the work, particularly in various schema of correspondences between the letters of the Arabic alphabet and sundry astrological forces, e. Of the fourteen undated copies that I have been able to view, none is possessed of any features that suggest an earlier date of production, but rather they are remarkably similar in their mise-en-page, hands, and other features to the dated copies.

A similar degeneration of information as that noted for the previous set of chains occurs here as well. Noah Gardiner Table 2: In reference to the tendency of many edition-makers and readers to ignore the wealth of paratexts and extratextual data found in premodern manuscripts, the Europeanist medievalist John Dagenais noted drily in Noah Gardiner how the conditions of their production and use impacted the perceived epistemological value of their contents, but all too rarely has this scholarship been integrated with the broader study of premodern texts.

Numbers indicate the number of references each work makes to its partners, e. There are obvious exceptions to the critique leveled here, including the works cited previously by Chamberlain, Berkey, Ohlander, and Dickinson, although these do not draw on specific codices so much as they present innovative general explorations of the use of books. A number without parentheses indictates the number of colophonically dated copies. A number in parentheses indicates undated codices that can be assigned to a century with a reasonably high degree of confidence on the basis of certain physical characteristics especially paper , mise-en- page, etc.

In cases where the number in the total number of copies column does not add up to the columns preceding it, this is a result of some number of undated copies for which I have no basis to estimate a date. Some of the copies of works counted here are abridgements or fragments. In each case, if a title is given in the manuscript, then it is noted immediately after the author; a standardized title follows in brackets if it differs from the given title.

In cases where no title is given in the manuscript, only the bracketed standardized title is given. Chester Beatty MS An Introduction to History, transl. Franz Rosenthal, 3 vols. Editions Besson, , — Brockelmann, Carl, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, 2 vols. Brill, —49 ; 3 Suppl. Chartier, Roger, The Order of Books: Pir Press, , 2: Sufismo y ciencias ocultas Ph. Glossing the Libro de Buen Amor Princeton: A History of Magic Books Oxford: Oxford University Press, Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, Fahd, Toufic, La Divination arabe: The Book of Omens Washington, D.

Smithsonian Institution Press, , — Religion and Magic in the Writings of Ahmad b. Rewriting the Script London: A Vademecum for Readers Leiden: Textes et pratiques magiques en milieu musulman Paris: Karthala, , 17— The Emergence of the Sciences of Religion Leiden: Brill, , — University of South Carolina Press, Kieckhefer, Richard, Forbidden Rites: Pennsylvania State University Press, A Short History Leiden: La science des lettres en islam Paris: Editions Dervy, , 91— Makdisi, George, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West Edinburgh: Routledge, , — Ashgate, , — Abstract Models for a Literary Theory London: Themes, Topics, and Typologies New York: Lang, , — Ohlander, Erik, Sufism in an Age of Transition: Pedersen, Johannes, The Arabic Book, transl.

Georg Olms Verlag, Routledge, , 1: Imprimierie Nationale, — Styers, Randall, Making Magic: Taylor, Christopher, In the Vicinity of the Righteous: P Mensing et al. Walter de Gruyter and Co. These controversies, even though they were connected to specific local JAIS contexts, are significant in a general way because they offer evidence for the spread of private reading among Sufis in the later Middle Ages. To appreciate the historical importance of this, one should ask how far it is new and whether it is limited to Sufism.

The first part outlines key changes relating to Sufi literary output in the 12th and 13th centuries. In particular, it examines the tension between orality and writing within Sufism, and the ways in which the written transmission of mystical knowledge was controlled or repressed. The second part draws attention to shared paradigms of both esoteric and exoteric knowledge as the connection between private reading and innovation, and the preservation of oral symbolism in written transmission.

Finally, the third part re-examines the 14th and 15th-century debates from the angle of the history of reading in medieval Sufism. The arguments exchanged in these debates bear witnesses to changes in reading practice linked to the shifting relationships between authority and knowledge in Islamic cultural history. Per quanto legate a specifici contesti locali, queste due controversie, sorte negli stessi anni ai due estremi del mondo arabo, sono il segno di una sempre maggiore diffusione della pratica della lettura privata in ambito sufi. Le prime due parti di questo studio cercano di rispondere a queste due domande.

La seconda parte mette in ONLINE evidenza alcuni paradigmi comuni alle scienze religiose tradizionali e al sufismo, come il nesso fra lettura privata e innovazione, e la persistenza del simbolismo orale nella trasmissione scritta. Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing; R. Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation, 67, , Samuela Pagani equiparabile alle discipline religiose tradizionali. Per una descrizione sintetica del contesto storico in cui sono nati questi manuali si veda A.

Stock, Listening for the Text. Per paralleli nella filosofia e nella mistica ebraica cfr. Si veda anche A. Safi, The Politics of Knowledge, , —5. Cook, Commanding Right, —6. Griffel, Apostasie, e Elmore, Islamic Sainthood, 3, 10, — Ogren, Renaissance and Rebirth, 27—30 e Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation, 33, — Pagani, Il rinnovamento, 53—66 e 95— Idel, Kabbalah, 19—20; E. Karamustafa, Sufism, ; M. Ohlander, Sufism, —5; M.

Karamustafa, Sufism, , n. Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text, —8. Prima ancora di avere esaminato il libro, o di avermi interrogato sul suo contenuto, mi disse: Mi sentivo come paralizzato. Ma lui mi disse: Ohlander, Sufism, —; cfr. Questo ovviamente non significa che uno studente non possa leggere da solo, ma che, per evitare errori, prima di memorizzare un testo, deve verificarne la correttezza con un maestro o con un ripetitore designato da questi.

Su questa formula cfr. Graham, Beyond the Written Word, Su questi passi e altri esempi in proposito: Berkey, Transmission, 26; D. Ayalon, Reading Palestine, —12; E. Non sono dunque la testimonianza del perpetuarsi della tradizione vivente di un insegnamento da maestro a discepolo, ma servono piuttosto a stabilire un legame simbolico con i grandi maestri del passato, e, attraverso di loro, con il Profeta. Sul valore del libro come strumento di perfezionamento nella letteratura filosofica, si veda D. Melchert, The Formation, Si veda anche ibid. Elmore, Islamic Sainthood, Bori, Ibn Taymiyya, —8.

Geoffroy, Le soufisme, , n. Chodkiewicz, Sceau, 80 e Questo procedimento, come commenta E. La tensione fra 66 E. Si veda anche L. Coccia, La trasparenza delle immagini, 3— La tendenza a vedere il libro come una persona ha radici remote che risalgono alla teologia del logos. Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text, —68; D. Boyarin, Border Lines, 89— Nicholson, Studies, , — I vari generi della letteratura sufi rispondono alle esigenze di diverse tipologie dei lettori — devozione, edificazione morale o ricerca intellettuale.

New Material added to the Sherman Library

La diffusione della letteratura sufi si accompagna a sua volta a un incremento della pratica della lettura privata. Si veda anche R. In queste polemiche, il libro ha un ruolo fondamentale. Infatti, lo studioso intelligente: La sostanza della contesa intorno al libro nel sufismo sembra risiedere proprio in questo contrasto. Nella conclusione dice infatti: Samuela Pagani una vita intera […]. Nello stesso testo, 1: Nwyia in uno studio esemplare del La differenza fra i due autori sta essenzialmente nelle letture consigliate: La sua scarsa stima per i maestri contemporanei gli fa peraltro ammettere che la guida dei libri possa dispensare da un maestro vivente.

Saenger, Space Between Words, —5. Il sufismo, parte integrante della cultura religiosa medievale, ha contribuito a rafforzare entrambi i poli di questa dialettica. Berlin We , ff. Zohar, the Book of Enlightenment, tr. Fonti secondarie Adang, C. Islam and the Enlightenment Oxford: Printing and Literacy, — Austin: University of Texas Press, Samuela Pagani Berkey, J.

Analisi delle fonti classiche della sua biografia, Suppl. The partition of Judaeo-Christianity, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Ergon, in corso di stampa. Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism Austin: Oxford University Press, , — LIT, , 51— Orientations spirituelles et enjeux culturels Damas: Une voie soufie dans le monde Paris: Their Doctrine and their History, tr. Samuela Pagani Graham, W. Fayard, , — Walter de Gruyter, New Perspectives New Haven and London: Yale University Press, The Formative Period, Edinburgh: Indiana University Press, Salerno, , 49— Institut franco-iranien de recherche-Maisonneuve, Essays in Honour of Hermann Landolt London: Harrassowitz , 3— Peter Lang, in corso di stampa.

Flammarion, in corso di stampa. Samuela Pagani Meier, F. The University of North Carolina Press, Verlag der Weltreligionen, Istituto Universitario Orientale, Rome, January 30, , ed. Piemontese, La comunicazione nella storia. Lo sviluppo del pensiero e le forme del comunicare. Their religious beliefs and practices, 3 ed. Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, The Origins of Silent Reading Stanford: Stanford University Press, On the Uses of the Past Baltimore- London: John Hopkins University Press, Samuela Pagani Strauss, L.

La Porta — D. Brill, , 35— Khaniqahi Nimatullahi Publications, , — Yale University Press, , — Giffen, Theory of Profane Love, xiii et xv.