scholarly journals The Cosmopolitan World of the Quran and Late Antique Humanism

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 562
Author(s):  
Todd Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Late Antique ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
Literary Genres

The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate how two distinct but deeply related literary genres, which had become especially prominent in the 7th century Nile-to-Oxus region, have left an enduring impression on the form and contents of the Quran. By saying this, it is not intended to suggest that the Quran was “influenced” by this or that extraneous or extra-textual phenomenon. Rather, it is suggested that, along the lines of the Quran’s own theory of revelation, it speaks through Muḥammad, “the language of his people” (Q14:4). Stated another away, the Quran employs themes and structures from both epic and apocalypse that would have been familiar to its audience in order to reveal and make clear its most cherished sacred truths, among which are: the Oneness of God, the Oneness of Religion and the Oneness of Humanity. Epic and apocalypse, then, emerge as features of the cultural and imaginative language of the intended audience of the Quran, just as Arabic is its “linguistic” language.

Late Antique Letter Collections

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
The Social ◽  
Letter Writer ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Letter Collection ◽  
Latin Letter

This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of the extant Greek and Latin letter collections of late antiquity (ca. 300-600 C.E.). Bringing together an international team of historians, classicists, and scholars of religion, it illustrates how letter collections advertised an image of the letter writer and introduces the social and textual histories of each collection. Nearly every chapter focuses on the letter collection of a different late ancient author—from the famous (or even infamous) to the obscure—and investigates its particular issues of content, arrangement, and publication context. On the whole, the volume reveals how late antique letter collections operated as a discrete literary genre with its own conventions, transmission processes, and self-presentational agendas while offering new approaches to interpret both larger letter collections and the individual letters contained within them. Each chapter contributes to a broad argument that scholars should read letter collections as they do representatives of other late antique literary genres, as single texts made up of individual components, with larger thematic and literary characteristics that are as important as those of their component parts.

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Biography

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
The One ◽  
Reference Tools ◽  
Reference Tool

Biography is one of the most widespread literary genres worldwide. This book offers the first wide-ranging, multi-authored survey on biography in Antiquity from its earliest representatives to Late Antiquity. It aims to be a broad introduction and a reference tool on the one hand, and to move significantly beyond the state-of-the-art on the other. To this dual end, it addresses conceptual questions about this sprawling genre, provides both in-depth readings of key-texts and diachronic studies, and deals with the reception of ancient biography in subsequent eras up to today. In addition, it approaches the concept of ancient biography more widely than other reference tools on the topic have done: it examines biographical depictions in different textual and visual media and provides outlines of biographical developments in ancient and late antique cultures other than the Graeco-Roman one.

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