Books published by De Gruyter

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.

In 1991, Laura Slatkin published The Power of Thetis: Allusion and Interpretation in the Iliad, in which she argued that Homer knowingly situated the storyworld of the Iliad against the backdrop of an older world of mythos by which the events in the Iliad are explained and given traction. Slatkin's focus was on Achilles' mother, Thetis: an ostensibly marginal and powerless goddess, Thetis nevertheless drives the plot of the Iliad, being allusively credited with the power to uphold or challenge the rule of Zeus. Now, almost thirty years after Slatkin's publication, this timely volume re-examines depictions and receptions of this ambiguous goddess, in works ranging from archaic Greek poetry to twenty-first century cinema. Twenty authors build upon Slatkin's readings to explore Thetis and multiple roles she played in Western literature, art, material culture, religion, and myth. Ever the shapeshifter, Thetis has been and continues to be reconceptualised: supporter or opponent of Zeus' regime, model bride or unwilling victim of Peleus' rape, good mother or child-murderess, figure of comedy or monstrous witch. Hers is an enduring power of transformation, resonating within art and literature.

Der Band bietet mit über 50 Beiträgen zu Schriftquellen und archäologischen Funden zahlreiche Neueditionen und -interpretationen, die unsere Kenntnis von Byzanz durch die Jahrhunderte und aus unterschiedlichen Blickwinkeln erweitern. Autorinnen und Autoren sind sowohl international renommierte Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler als auch jüngere Byzantinistinnen und Byzantinisten, der zeitliche Horizont der Beiträge reicht vom 4. bis zum 15. Jahrhundert. Besondere Schwerpunkte bilden Topographie, Hagiographie, Editionsphilologie und Kunstgeschichte, die zugleich die unterschiedlichen Forschungsbereiche Albrecht Bergers widerspiegeln; ihm ist dieser Band gewidmet. Ein Vorwort, Schriftenverzeichnis des Geehrten sowie eine ihm gewidmete Tabula gratulatoria komplettieren den Band.

The body, touch and its sensations are present, sometimes viewed in contradictory ways, both expressed, visualized, and rejected, in early modern art and literature. In seven essays moving from the 16th to the mid-18th century, and from Italy and Spain to France and Sweden, this volume explores strategies used by early modern women poets, philosophers, and artists in order to create subversive expressions of the body, gender and the senses. Showing how body and soul, the carnal and the divine, the senses and the mind, could be represented as intertwined and dependent on each other in various ways, it gives due attention to European women writers and artists that in unconventional ways responded to the period's two main intellectual and philosophical attitudes - Epicurean and Stoic - towards the body and its senses. These attitudes not only intersect in the period's discussions of virtue and other moral phenomena, but are central to critical assessment of the relations between emotions, perception, and reason. By following this topic from a gender perspective, the book highlights other forms of subjectivity than the ones usually related to the early modern period's dominating subjectivation of female bodies, thinking and desires.

Preaching, a practice composed of and accompanied by a myriad of different activities, is an essential element of Muslim religious life both within and beyond mosques. As such, Islamic preaching is a common means of religious promulgation and knowledge transfer, of pastoral guidance and uplift, but also of communication between believers, and as a source of negotiating religious normativity, power relations, and societal topics. Given the centrality of preaching in Muslims' religious life, this collective volume presents contributions on various aspects of performance, text, space, and materiality of Islamic preaching in history and present. The interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary framework captures Islamic preaching as it unfolds in its social setting. The volume aims at representing the inner-Islamic diversity by depicting the practice of preaching as it came about in different times and geographical locations, shedding light onto Friday gatherings and sermons (ḫutba), and other forms of preaching (e. g. waʿẓ), be it during Ramadan, at religious feasts and commemorations, or on personal occasions such as weddings and funerals. Therefore, each chapter offers a different insight into the interwoven character of sermons' contents, the preacher him/herself, and the audience by emphasising the role of their bodily performance, of the temporality and spatiality of preaching, and of the objects and items involved.

This book provides an in-depth examination of the Yungdrung Bon religion in light of globalization. In its global dimension, Bon has been attracting a growing number of Westerners, particularly to its Dzogchen teachings and meditation practices. In this expansion, Bon operates in a dynamic context where forces that create changes in the tradition coexist, sometimes in tension and sometimes in tandem, with other forces that aim to preserve it. In tracing the process through which Bon has become a global religion, this monograph narrates the story of the principal figures who initially facilitated this transmission, following their journey from Tibet to India and Nepal. The narrative then moves to explore the dynamics taking place in the transmission and reception of Yungdrung Bon in Western countries, opening up a new viewpoint on the expansion of Tibetan religious traditions into the West and painting a comprehensive picture of the modern history of the Yungdrung Bon religion as narrated by its participants. In so doing, it makes an invaluable contribution to the study of Tibetan traditions in the West as well as to the wider history of religions, social anthropology, psychology, and conversion studies.

Plato's Timaeus is unique in Greek Antiquity for presenting the creation of the world as the work of a divine demiurge. The maker bestows order on sensible things and imitates the world of the intellect by using the Forms as models. While the creation-myth of the Timaeus seems unparalleled, this book argues that it is not the first of Plato's dialogues to use artistic language to articulate the relationship of the objects of the material world to the world of the intellect. The book adopts an interpretative angle that is sensitive to the visual and art-historical developments of Classical Athens to argue that sculpture, revolutionized by the advent of the lost-wax technique for the production of bronze statues, lies at the heart of Plato's conception of the relation of the human soul and body to the Forms. It shows that, despite the severe criticism of mimēsis in the Republic, Plato's use of artistic language rests on a positive model of mimēsis. Plato was in fact engaged in a constructive dialogue with material culture and he found in the technical processes and the cultural semantics of sculpture and of the art of weaving a valuable way to conceptualise and communicate complex ideas about humans' relation to the Forms.

This volume of the series "Key Concepts in Interreligious Discourses" investigates the roots of the concept of "soul" in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.The human soul fascinates not only believers in the three monotheistic faiths. Believing in an immortal entitiy, surpassing body, materia and their temporality and thus seeming to be closer to the creator that the mere body was and remains to be a vividly discussed theme in theological and practical debates. Even our secular, postreligious environment is unable to disengage from the key concept of the soul. Numerous proverbs, undefined concepts and hopes prove this fact. Asking for the soul means asking fundamental questions like life after death and therefor asking for one of the most fundamental and uniting hopes of human beings, be they secular or religious.The volume presents the concept of "soul" in its different aspects as anchored in the traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It unfolds commonalities and differences between the three monotheistic religions as well as the manifold discourses about peace within these three traditions. The book offers fundamental knowledge about the specific understanding of the soul in each one of these traditions, their interdependencies and their relationship to secular world views.