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The Well-Tempered Reader provides a new understanding of the term adab, a ubiquitous concept in Arabic literature with many meanings. In Sarah R. Bin Tyeer's analysis, adab is more than just a way of writing or the cultivation of moral excellence, as it is often understood. It is rather an ethical way of perceiving, understanding, and living which results from ceaseless critical interaction between the individual and all aspects of his or her social, cultural, natural, and metaphysical environment. Through a close reading of texts from eighth-century Baghdad to nineteenth-century Lebanon in which adab emerges as a force across historical periods and geographies, Bin Tyeer posits the term as a generative literary and cultural framework and a discursive force for analyzing literary acts. This is the first book-length study of adab as an intellectual institution that legitimized its own existence through the formation of adabized subjects, revealing its import not only for Arabic literary studies but for comparative literature as a whole.

"Guided by the heritage of a millennial tradition, Sarah Bin Tyeer paves the way for cultural renewal by resurrecting the universal dimension of classical Arabic letters."—Stefan Sperl, Professor Emeritus of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, SOAS University of London

"A tour de force—erudite, original, and profoundly insightful. Tracing adab across centuries and genres, Bin Tyeer reveals its role as a critical and ethical framework grounded in murūʾa—the ideal of the human defined by intellectual virtue, moral resolve, and cultivated ways of reading."—Sarra Tlili, Associate Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, University of Florida