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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
ma‘na 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.
Alexander Key is Assistant Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature in the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at Stanford University.
"Alexander Key takes four major exponents of eleventh-century Arabic lexicography, theology, logic, and poetics and explores the interconnectedness of their thinking on 'mental content' and its various 'accurate' realizations. His explorations of the conceptual base and vocabulary shared by these thinkers convince. This book, brimming with philological insight, crackles with erudition."—James E. Montgomery, Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic, Fellow of Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge
"This is really an excellent book–well-written, engaging, intellectually exciting, and a great advance in the field. The selection of four scholars, experts in different disciplines, but all talking about language and meaning, is extremely clever. The sophistication and nuance of the argument makes this a work of solid scholarship."—Robert Gleave, Professor of Arabic Studies, University of Exeter
296 pp.6 x 9
9780520298019$34.95|£30.00Paper
Aug 2018