°®åú´«Ã½

Main content start
Book

Language between God and the Poets: Ma‘na in the Eleventh Century

Language between God and the Poets: Ma‘na in the Eleventh Century
2018
Author(s)
Publisher
University of California Press

In the Arabic eleventh-century, scholars were intensely preoccupied with the way that language generated truth and beauty. Their work in poetics, logic, theology, and lexicography defined the intellectual space between God and the poets. In Language Between God and the Poets, Alexander Key argues that ar-Raghib al-Isfahani, Ibn Furak, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani shared a conceptual vocabulary based on the words ³¾²¹â€˜n²¹ and haqiqah. They used this vocabulary to build theories of language, mind, and reality that answered perennial questions: how to structure language and reference, how to describe God, how to construct logical arguments, and how to explain poetic affect.

 
Place Published:  Berkeley, CA