Books published by De Gruyter

Although it is fashionable among modernists to claim that globalism emerged only since ca. 1800, the opposite can well be documented through careful comparative and transdisciplinary studies, as this volume demonstrates, offering a wide range of innovative perspectives on often neglected literary, philosophical, historical, or medical documents. Texts, images, ideas, knowledge, and objects migrated throughout the world already in the pre-modern world, even if the quantitative level compared to the modern world might have been different. In fact, by means of translations and trade, for instance, global connections were established and maintained over the centuries. Archetypal motifs developed in many literatures indicate how much pre-modern people actually shared. But we also discover hard-core facts of global economic exchange, import of exotic medicine, and, on another level, intensive intellectual debates on religious issues. Literary evidence serves best to expose the extent to which contacts with people in foreign countries were imaginable, often desirable, and at times feared, of course. The pre-modern world was much more on the move and reached out to distant lands out of curiosity, economic interests, and political and military concerns. Diplomats crisscrossed the continents, and artists, poets, and craftsmen traveled widely. We can identify, for instance, both the Vikings and the Arabs as global players long before the rise of modern globalism, so this volume promises to rewrite many of our traditional notions about pre-modern worldviews, economic conditions, and the literary sharing on a global level, as perhaps best expressed by the genre of the fable.

Der zweisprachige, deutsch-italienische Band geht der Frage nach, inwiefern Rezensionen in Zeitschriften zwischen 1700 und 1850 zu einem Begriff der 'Weltliteratur' beitrugen, wobei 'Weltliteratur' als Diskursanker rekonstruiert wird, der von Beginn an durchaus widersprüchlich eingesetzt und verstanden wurde. Bisher ausgeblendet geblieben ist die Frage nach den kommunikativen Bedingungen, die einer transnationalen Verständigung über Literatur zugrundelagen. Die Beiträge kehren zu den fundierenden Konstellationen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts zurück, um einen Aspekt in den Blick zu nehmen, der bisher erstaunlich vernachlässigt wurde: jenen der medialen Voraussetzungen des Weltliteratur-Diskurses. Dies ist umso erstaunlicher, als Goethe den Begriff der 'Weltliteratur' nicht von ungefähr mit Blick auf die neuen Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten prägte, die das schnellste Massenmedium seiner Zeit, die periodische Presse, bereithielt. Mit Blick auf eine breite Palette von europäischen Zeitschriften wird die Rezension in ihrer kommunikationssteuernden Bedeutung für die frühe Aushandlung von 'Weltliteratur' sichtbar gemacht. Die Beiträge des Bandes zeigen, wie Rezensionen die frühe internationale Debatte allererst ermöglichten und nachhaltig prägten.

This volume builds on the work of Ilse Laude-Cirtautas (1926¿2019), a pioneering Turkologist who introduced the field of comparative Turkic studies to the US in the 1960s. It presents an ongoing dialogue whereby scholars from central and inner Asia and the West engage on issues of Turkic heritage, identity, language and literature. The discussions enrich scholarship in Central and Inner Asian Studies and explore the question "Who are the Turks?"

For about one thousand years, the Distichs of Cato were the first Latin text of every student across Europe and latterly the New World. Chaucer, Cervantes, and Shakespeare assumed their audiences knew them well--and they almost certainly did. Yet most Classicists today have either never heard of them or mistakenly attribute them to Cato the Elder. The Distichs are a collection of approximately 150 two-line maxims in hexameters that offer instructions about or reflections on topics such as friendship, money, reputation, justice, and self-control. Wisdom from Rome argues that Classicists (and others) should read the Distichs: they provide important insights into the ancient Roman literate masses' conceptions of society and their views of relationships between the individual, family, community, and state. Newly dated to the first century CE, they are an important addition and often corrective to more familiar contemporary texts that treat the same topics. Moreover, as the field of Classics increasingly acknowledges the intellectual importance of exploring the reception of Classical texts, an introduction to one of the most widely read ancient texts for many centuries is timely and important.

En 2021, cinco de las siete repúblicas centroamericanas celebraron el bicentenario de su independencia de la Corona española ocurrida en 1821. ¿Cómo se ha desarrollado Centroamérica durante los últimos dos siglos? ¿Qué lecciones se pueden aprender de la historia de Centroamérica? El libro ofrece una revisión profunda e interdisciplinaria de esta región entre el siglo XIX y XIX. Los artículos se basan en fuentes nuevas provenientes de diferentes archivos, y de una pluralidad de métodos de investigación que hacen posible una reflexión crítica de la historiografía tradicional. Esto significa incluir visiones, motivaciones y perspectivas centroamericanas frente a aquellos cambios que trascienden sus efectos en las sociedades actuales de la región. Las contribuciones de autores de América Latina y la región euroatlántica ponen el énfasis en la perspectiva de procesos transnacionales que representan el cambio epistemológico para una mayor compresión de Centroamérica.

Despite the relevance of astrology in Graeco-Roman mentality, our information about the early period of Hellenistic astrology is marred by the scarcity of original sources. Personal astrology did not take off until the late Hellenistic period, due to the more substantial Hellenization of Mesopotamia facilitating the import of Babylonian theories. The most relevant doctrines, mostly surviving as references and partial paraphrases in later authors and astrological miscellanies, are attached to the pseudepigraphical names of Nechepsos and Petosiris, which have been traced back to the Egyptian Demotic tradition. Critodemus, who is classified as a later author even if Firmicus Maternus invokes him as a founding authority, appears as a parallel to these Egyptian transmitters, in that he presented astrology, like them, in the form of a didactic poem, but employing an Orphic frame instead of Egyptian. By collecting, contextualizing, and analyzing all the evidence on this author, this book establishes a relatively early chronology for Critodemus and aims both at distinguishing his original contributions and at explaining the various forms in which his text was used and modified in the later tradition.

How have humans sought to prevent viable assumptions about themselves and their world from being in force, how does this propensity manifest itself, and in what terms has it been theorized and criticized throughout the ages? Through a diversity of discrete case-studies spanning a vast time-scale (including topics such as paleolithic personal ornaments, pre-ancient ritual economy, ancient philosophy, and modern artful science), this study explores the means by which humans voluntarily suspend habitual patterns of judgement and disbelief in order to perceive the world differently. In recognizing how such modes of suspension can be variously traced back to religious comportments and institutions, a new sense of religious participation is identified beyond the credulous subjunction to artifice and its critical dismissal. The relevant outcome of this long-term comparative approach is that sincere devotion to a (practical or theoretical, scientific or spiritual) cause and the temporary affirmation of artifice are not mutually exclusive comportments, but rather genealogically akin to the discretely sacred (alchemical, ataraxic, epistemological, spectacular, thaumaturgic, etc.) concerns of a pre-modern world.

This book is for engineers and students of aerospace, materials and mechanical engineering. It covers the transition from aluminum to composite materials for aerospace structures and includes advanced analyses used in industries. New in the 2nd Edition is material on morphing structures, large deflection plates, nondestructive methods, vibration correlation technique for shear loaded plates, vibrations to measure physical properties, and more.

The updated edition of the third of three vollumes on Medical Physics presents modern physical methods for medical therapy with a focus on tumor treatment. It provides background information on radiation biology, radiation response of tissues, and linear energy transfer through radiation. Therapies with external radiation sources (x-rays, protons, neutrons) as well as internal radiation sources (brachytherapy) are discussed in detail. Other chapters deal with the use of lasers and nanoparticles in modern medicine. This volume closes with a short chapter on medical statistics. NEW: highlighted boxes emphasize specifi c topics; math boxes explain more advanced mathematical issues; each chapter concludes with a summary of the key concepts, questions, exercises, and a self-assessment of the acquired competence. The appendix provides answers to questions and solutions to exercises.

The volume brings together contributions on 15th and 16th century translation throughout Europe (in particular Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and England).Whilst studies of the reception of ancient Greek drama in this period have generally focused on one national tradition, this book widens the geographical and linguistic scope so as to approach it as a European phenomenon. Latin translations are particularly emblematic of this broader scope: translators from all over Europe latinised Greek drama and, as they did so, developed networks of translators and practices of translation that could transcend national borders. The chapters collected here demonstrate that translation theory and practice did not develop in national isolation, but were part of a larger European phenomenon, nourished by common references to Biblical and Greco-Roman antiquities, and honed by common religious and scholarly controversies. In addition to situating these texts in the wider context of the reception of Greek drama in the early modern period, this volume opens avenues for theoretical debate about translation practices and discourses on translation, and on how they map on to twenty-first-century terminology.

The disparagement of multilingualism is a European development of the 18th and 19th centuries in which one national language and national literature were advocated, established and institutionalised. Multilingual writers made use of the creative potential of several languages even then. However, they often adapted to an increasingly monolingual book market, which made their individual multilingualism invisible.This is evident in literary historiography which established a monolingual national canon.Researching hidden multilingualism is often difficult: since multilingual texts by multilingual writers were often not published or were published in a monolingual version, sources are scarce. Literary histories of the time often do not mention multilingualism. Furthermore, many multilingual writers were members of minority groups (women, Jewish, Non-European) and thus often neglected.The volume offers methods and theories to systematically approach this hidden material, as well as case studies on authors and national literatures in a multilingual context. It thus contributes to the restructuring of a multilingual transnational literary history that is applicable to different philologies.

Judaic cultures have a commitment to language that is exceptional. Language in many form - texts, books and scrolls; learning, interpretation, material practices that generate material practices - are central to Judaic conduct, experience, and spirituality. In this Judaic traditions differ from philosophical and theological ones that make language secondary. Traditional metaphysics has privileged the immaterial and unchanging, as unchanging truth that language can at best convey and at worst distort. Such traditional metaphysics has come under critique since Nietzsche in ways that the author explores. Shira Wolosky argues that Judaic traditions converge with contemporary metaphysical critique rather than being its target. Focusing on the work of Derrida, Levinas, Scholem and others, the author examines traditions of Judaic interpretation against backgrounds of biblical exegesis; sign-theory as it recasts language meaning in ways that concord with Judaic textuality; negative theology as it differs in Judaic tradition from those which negate language itself; and lastly outline a discourse ethics that draws on Judaic language theory. This study is directed to students and scholars of: Judaic thought, religious studies and theology; theory of interpretation; Levinas and other modern Jewish philosophical writers, placing them in broader contexts of philosophy, theology, and language theory. It is shown how Jewish discourses on language address urgent problems of value and norms in the contemporary world that has challenged traditional anchors of truth and meaning.

Nel rigoglioso revival di commenti al Bellum Civile di Lucano degli ultimi due decenni il libro VIII non aveva ancora ricevuto un interesse proporzionato alla sua decisiva importanza nella struttura generale del poema: fino a ora gli unici strumenti esegetici completi a disposizione degli studiosi restavano quelli di J. P. Postgate (1917) e R. Mayer (1981), ormai inevitabilmente datati. Questo nuovo commento, corredato da un'ampia introduzione, da un testo criticamente riveduto e da una traduzione 'di servizio' concepita come un primo approccio interpretativo, si propone di colmare questo vuoto non soltanto tenendo in debito conto il rinnovato dibattito scientifico su numerosi aspetti del poema di Lucano, ma facendo dell'analisi minuta del testo l'occasione per riconsiderare sotto una luce nuova alcuni temi tradizionali della bibliografia lucanea, dal rapporto con le fonti storiche a quello con la pratica della declamazione, dalle posizioni politiche del poeta alle sue competenze tecnico-scientifiche. Per queste ragioni il volume si configura come un'opportunità di confronto e di approfondimento non soltanto per chi si occupa di epica latina o di letteratura di età neroniana, ma anche per gli storici e gli studiosi di retorica.

Jamaica Kincaid's works consistently explore how colonial history affects contemporary everyday lives. Throughout her novels, short fiction, and non-fictional essays, Kincaid's texts engage with history through its medial representations, which are starkly determined by colonial perspectives. This study examines the entanglements of temporalities in current perceptions of the past and how literary text intervenes in historical consciousness. With a focus on the media text, image, and the human body, the chapters of this book demonstrate how Kincaid's "poetics of impermanence" counter colonial representations of history with strategies of ambiguity, repetition, and redirection. Kincaid's texts repeat and revise aspects of colonial history - a process that decenters the totality of historical colonial ideology and replaces it with self-determined versions of the past through a multiplication of perspectives and voices.

Il volume contiene le lettere scritte da Scipio Slataper (1888-1915) alle tre amiche triestine, Anna Pulitzer, Elody Oblath e Gigetta (Luisa) Carniel, tra l'estate del 1909 e il 3 dicembre 1915, quando egli cadde in combattimento sul Podgora, in vista del tanto amato Carso triestino. In queste lettere, che fungono anche da pagine di diario poiché in Scipio sovente la lettera è un "di sé a sé stesso", si rispecchia un'incandescente vicenda esistenziale ed intellettuale: di amicizia, di amore, di dolore, di ricerca del senso della vita, di impegno culturale e civile, di creazione artistica; mentre le ultime, a Gigetta, testimoniano i pochi mesi di vita al fronte. La cognizione del dolore, e quindi della vita, che gli venne dalla tragica morte di Anna, con cui visse una brevissima storia d'amore, fece riconoscere a Scipio il senso e il valore, e quindi il compito, da dare alla propria esistenza: amare gli uomini e operare per il loro bene. Una nozione più ampia e inclusiva dell'amore, che trascende quello a due, dall'estate del 1911, ricambiato, per Gigetta, ch'egli sposò nel settembre del 1913, mentre a Elody continuò a legarlo un'amicizia vera e profonda, provata su tutti i frangenti.

Due to the long presence of Muslims in Islamic territories (Al-Andalus and Granada) and of Muslims minorities in the Christians parts, the Iberian Peninsula provides a fertile soil for the study of the Qur'an and Qur'an translations made by both Muslims and Christians. From the mid-twelfth century to at least the end of the seventeenth, the efforts undertaken by Christian scholars and churchmen, by converts, by Muslims (both Mudejars and Moriscos) to transmit, interpret and translate the Holy Book are of the utmost importance for the understanding of Islam in Europe. This book reflects on a context where Arabic books and Arabic speakers who were familiar with the Qur'an and its exegesis coexisted with Christian scholars. The latter not only intended to convert Muslims, and polemize with them but also to adquire solid knowledge about them and about Islam. Qur'ans were seized during battle, bought, copied, translated, transmitted, recited, and studied. The different features and uses of the Qur'an on Iberian soil, its circulation as well as the lives and works of those who wrote about it and the responses of their audiences, are the object of this book.

Contemplada en perspectiva histórica, la cultura barroca, con todos sus acervos y experiencias, se ha visto relegada a un segundo plano, cuando no ha sido silenciada y ninguneada, en beneficio de la racionalidad científico-económica hegemónica en Europa. En este contexto, se hace necesario mostrar, desde una óptica amplia e integradora, los factores y procesos determinantes en la configuración del espacio cultural barroco en América Latina, valorando en su justa medida cómo ese mundo inventado, singular y único, ha terminado cristalizando un ethos transgresor y mestizo, alternativo a la modernidad dominante, irreductible al barroco ibérico y practicable todavía en el presente inmediato: el ethos barroco latinoamericano. ¿Es el ethos barroco latinoamericano una alternativa real para contrarrestar el avance de la actual crisis civilizatoria? Consumida por sus propias contradicciones e incongruencias hasta la extenuación, el nuevo malestar de la cultura y sus devastadores efectos sobre el ser humano y la naturaleza imprimen la necesidad de idear estrategias radicales de resistencia, es decir, estrategias de construcción del mundo de la vida donde el Barroco propiamente latinoamericano encuentre su sentido liberador.

The magister equitum, a subordinate to the Roman dictator during the Roman Republic, has been little studied to-date, in part due to the scattered and antiquarian nature of the evidence. This book addresses this gap by providing a definitive description and analysis of the office, focusing on three core questions: first, and most importantly, what were the powers and role of the office?; second, what senatorial rank did the magister equitum have?; finally, how did the magister equitum evolve under the first century BCE dictators, Sulla and Caesar? The book engages with recent advances in understanding the constitutional foundations and development of the Republican state to re-assess the role played by the office and its occupants in crucial moments of Roman history. It argues that the magister equitum was, and was understood by Romans to be, a central and significant part of the Roman Republican constitution.

Eine Theorie der Prosa liegt in der Literaturwissenschaft bislang nicht vor. Die Bände dieser Reihe schlagen ein literaturwissenschaftliches Format vor, das sich in einem ganz eigenen Zugang um das Konzept poetischer Selbstreferenz gruppiert und Prosa nicht als Prosakunst, Stillehre oder als allgemeine Texttheorie fasst, sie zudem nicht auf der Ebene der gängigen Form- und Gattungskonzepte verortet. Angestrebt wird eine umfassende Theorie der Prosa, die einerseits durch literaturtheoretische Grundlagenarbeit, andererseits durch exemplarische Lektüren begründet wird.

Este volumen está dedicado al pensamiento literario de Michel Foucault, a la luz de las publicaciones recientes de los inéditos de su primera época. Aquí proponemos hacer una arqueología de los textos que Foucault dedica a la teoría literaria y a conceptos claramente literarios como ficción, afuera o transgresión, para comprender cómo ideas clave del segundo Foucault -tales como parresía, cuidado de sí, veridicción- responden a genealogías que el autor ya trazó en sus trabajos sobre conceptos literarios. De este modo, se relacionan sus trabajos literarios de los primeros años con sus aportaciones filosóficas fundamentales de los últimos años. Todo ello a la luz de tres ejes que consideramos clave: el de ficción, el de política de la literatura y el de experiencia como vida. Se trabajan, además, las relaciones de Foucault con otras teorías contemporáneas (M. Blanchot, G. Bataille, R. Barthes, L. Althusser, J. Rancière, G. Deleuze) y con conceptos precedents de autores que fueron de destacada influencia en su pensamiento (F. Nietzsche, M. Merleau-Ponty, G. W. F. Hegel, I. Kant).

The circulation and entanglements of human beings, data, and goods have not necessarily and by themselves generated a universalising consciousness. The "global" and the "universal", in other words, are not the same. The idea of a world-society remains highly contested. Our times are marked by the fragmentation of a double relativistic character: the inevitable critique of Western universalism on the one hand, and resurgent identitarian and neo-nationalistic claims to identity on the other. Sources of an argumentation for a strong universalism brought forward by Western traditions such as Christianity, Marxism, and Liberalism have largely lost their legitimation. All the while, manifold and situated narratives of a common world that re-address the universal are under way of being produced and gain significance. This volume tracks the development and relevance of such cultural and social practices that posit forms of what we call minor universality. It asks: Where and how do contemporary practices open up concrete settings so as to create experiences, reflections and agencies of a shared humanity? With contributions by Isaac Bazié, Anil Bhatti, Jean-Luc Chappey, Elsie Cohen, Leyla Dakhli, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Nicole Fischer, Albert Gouaffo, Stefan Helgesson, Fatma Hotait, Christopher M. Hutton, Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Mario Laarmann, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Olivier Remaud, Gisèle Sapiro, Bénédicte Savoy, Maria-Anna Schiffers, Laurens Schlicht, Sergio Ugalde Quintana, Hélène Thierard, Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll.

This volume examines the ten most popular fictional narratives in early modern Europe between 1470 and 1800. Each of these narratives was marketed in numerous European languages and circulated throughout several centuries. Combining literary studies and book history, this work offers for the first time a transnational perspective on a selected text corpus of this genre. It explores the spatio-temporal transmission of the texts in different languages and the materiality of the editions: the narratives were bought, sold, read, translated and adapted across European borders, from the south of Spain to Iceland and from Great Britain to Poland. Thus, the study analyses the multi-faceted processes of cultural circulation, translation and adaptation of the texts. In their diverse forms of mediality such as romance, drama, ballad and penny prints, they also make a significant contribution to a European identity in the early modern period. The narrative texts examined here include Apollonius, Septem sapientum, Amadis de Gaula, Fortunatus, Pierre de Provence et la belle Maguelonne, Melusine, Griseldis, Aesopus' Life and Fables, Reynaert de vos and Till Ulenspiegel.

Mehr als hundert Jahre nach dem Erscheinen des Cours de linguistique générale (Grundfragen der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft) gilt der Schweizer Indoeuropäist, Sprachphilosoph und Zeichentheoretiker Ferdinand de Saussure noch immer als der 'revolutionäre Begründer' des Strukturalismus, jenes Strukturalismus, den Cassirer als eine 'allgemeine Tendenz des Denkens' und Lévi-Strauss als ein 'epistemologisches Modell' bezeichnet hatte, dem eine 'unvergleichliche Bedeutung für die Humanwissenschaften' zukomme. Die Rolle des Paradigmengründers wird Saussure vor allem als 'Autor' des Cours zugeschrieben, eines Buches, das er nicht verfasst hat und dessen Autorschaft er sich auch nicht hätte zuschreiben lassen. Das 1916 erschienene Werk, das wohl die am meisten zitierte sprachwissenschaftliche Abhandlung des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts darstellt, hatte eine spektakuläre Wirkungsgeschichte, in der eine geradezu symbiotische Verbindung zwischen dem Autornamen 'Saussure' und der epistemologischen Bewegung des Strukturalismus entstand. Die Autoren dieses Bandes öffnen aus verschiedenen disziplinären Perspektiven den Blick für ein Saussure'sches Denken auch jenseits der Grenzen der strukturalistischen Episteme.