Brains Confounded by the Ode of Ab? Sh?d?f Expounded : Volume One

Al-Shirb&

ISBN 10: 1479882348 / ISBN 13: 9781479882342

Editore: New York University Press Jul 2016, 2016

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Neuware - Unique in pre-twentieth-century Arabic literature for taking the countryside as its central theme, Y¿suf al-Shirb¿n¿'s Brains Confounded combines a mordant satire on seventeenth-century Egyptian rural society with a hilarious parody of the verse-and-commentary genre so beloved by scholars of his day. In Volume One, al-Shirb¿n¿ describes the three rural 'types'-peasant cultivator, village man-of-religion and rural dervish-offering numerous anecdotes testifying to the ignorance, dirtiness, illiteracy, lack of proper religious understanding, and criminality of each. He follows it in Volume Two with a 47-line poem supposedly written by a peasant named Ab¿ Sh¿d¿f, who charts the rise and fall of his fortunes and bewails, above all, the lack of access to delicious foods to which his poverty has condemned him. Wielding the scholarly tools of elite literature, al-Shirb¿n¿ responds to the poem with derision and ridicule, dotting his satire of the ignorant rustic with numerous digressions into love, food, and flatulence. Witty, bawdy, and vicious, Brains Confounded belongs to an unrecognized genre from an understudied period in Egypt's Ottoman history, and is a work of outstanding importance for the study of pre-modern colloquial Egyptian Arabic, pitting the 'coarse' rural masses against the 'refined' and urbane in a contest for cultural and religious primacy, with a heavy emphasis on the writing of verse as a yardstick of social acceptability. A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Codice articolo 9781479882342

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Brains Confounded by the Ode of Ab? Sh?d?f Expounded : Volume One
• Editore: New York University Press Jul 2016
• Data di pubblicazione: 2016
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1479882348
• ISBN 13: 9781479882342
• Rilegatura: Buch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 236 L x 156 A x 38 P (millimetri) 236 millimetri di larghezza per 156 millimetri di altezza per 38 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 798 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

Unique in pre-20th-century Arabic literature for taking the countryside as its central theme, Yusuf al-Shirbini’s Brains Confounded combines a mordant satire on seventeenth-century Egyptian rural society with a hilarious parody of the verse-and-commentary genre so beloved by scholars of his day.

In Volume One, Al-Shirbini describes the three rural “types”—peasant cultivator, village man-of-religion and rural dervish—offering numerous anecdotes testifying to the ignorance, dirtiness, illiteracy, lack of proper religious understanding, and criminality of each. He follows it in Volume Two with a 47-line poem supposedly written by a peasant named Abu Shaduf, who charts the rise and fall of his fortunes and bewails, above all, the lack of access to delicious foods to which his poverty has condemned him. Wielding the scholarly tools of elite literature, al-Shirbini responds to the poem with derision and ridicule, dotting his satire of the ignorant rustic with numerous digressions into love, food, and flatulence.

Witty, bawdy, and vicious, Brains Confounded belongs to an unrecognized genre from an understudied period in Egypt’s Ottoman history, and is a work of outstanding importance for the study of pre-modern colloquial Egyptian Arabic, pitting the “coarse” rural masses against the “refined” and urbane in a contest for cultural and religious primacy, with a heavy emphasis on the writing of verse as a yardstick of social acceptability.

Informazioni sull'autore

Yusuf al-Shirbini was a well-educated Egyptian from the eleventh/seventeenth century, thought to originate from the town of Shirbin, then a significant rural center in the eastern part of Delta. Little is known about him--including his social standing and profession--beyond Brains Confounded and two other extant texts: The Pearls (Al-La'ali' wa-l-durar) and The Casting Aside of the Clods for the Unstringing of the Pearls (Tarh al-madar li-hall al-la'ali' wa-l-durar).