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| No. 75 |
| ISBN
978-90-5789-022-2
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| 236 pp. |
| Leiden 1999 |
| Price:
€ 25,20 |
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this book |
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A
history of Tigrinya literature in Eritrea. The oral and the
written, 1890 -1991
Ghirmai Negash
This pioneer study traces the history
of Tigrinya literature in Eritrea, a barely explored field,
principally using original sources and framing it against the
background of the country's colonial history. It treats oral
and written literary traditions in Tigrinya as one literary
system, rather than separately.
While taking up the challenge to bring this largely unknown
body of African literature into the 'mainstream' of world literary
history and epistemology, the author initially raises a fundamental
question: why has this literature barely drawn the attention
of the literary establishment? In offering an explanation, he
maintains that the colonial history of Eritrea and the armed
struggle were the main factors, but he also criticises scholars
in the West, whom he reproaches for being scholarly inaccurate
and ideologically subversive in their treatment and representation
of Tigrinya literature. These claims are based on empirical
evidence, but are also sustained by a post-colonial analytical
discourse that is translated into the context of the political,
cultural and linguistic policies of the former Ethiopian regimes
of Haile Selassie and the Dergue in Eritrea.
This is an original study introducing a novel topic and, in
that capacity, it breaks new ground in Eritrean studies.
(In English,
236 pp.) |
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| No.
76 |
| ISBN
978-90-5789-023-9 |
| 136
pp. |
| Leiden
1999 |
| Price:
€ 19,20 |
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this book |
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La
Geste de Nankoman. Textes sur la fondation de Naréna
(MALI)
Seydou Camara and Jan Jansen
(red.)
Cet
ouvrage, qui est un premier essai de collaboration scientifique
sur le sujet, montre qu'il existe encore en Afrique de grands
cycles narratifs inconnus et qu'il y a encore beaucoup de
travail à faire en la matière. Il est l'aboutissement
d'un projet conçu et réalisé par deux
chercheurs qui ont bien voulu contribuer à
une meilleure connaissance de l'histoire du Manden et
du fonctionnement de la société mandingue
où la geste est un genre littéraire fort prisé.
Soucieux de la sauvegarde des témoignages oraux, les
auteurs ont entrepris de livrer au public ce que la tradition
a retenu et que les notables et bardes croient être
la vérité historique sur la fondation de Naréna,
localité maninka (malinké) du sud-ouest du Mali.
(In
French, 136 pp.) |
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| No. 70 |
| ISBN
978-90-5789-013-0 |
| 364 pp |
| Leiden 1998 |
| Price:
€ 36,00 |
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this book |
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Bringing
a Laugh to a Scowling Face. A study and critical edition of
`Alî Ibn Sûdûn's "Nuzhat al-nufûs
wa-mud
Arnoud
Vrolijk
In fifteenth-century Cairo, a second-generation
Mamluk author `Alî Ibn Sûdûn called tried
to make his mark as a religious scholar and a serious poet,
but failed. By switching to humorous verse he had immediate
success, but he paid for it with the loss of his own reputation.
Banished for his "immorality", he died in Damascus
in 1464. The work he left behind is a delightful collection
of occasional poetry and prose, an almost carnivalesque parade
of poems singing the praise of Oriental dishes and hashish ("the
poor man's wine"), poems on weddings and circumcisions,
and perfectly serious pieces destined for religious festivals.
Many poems are written in the Arabic vernacular of his time.
Apart from its literary merits the work is an invaluable source
for those who are interested in Egyptian daily life in the Middle
Ages.
The present edition of the Arabic text, based on two autographs,
is accompanied by a study of the author and his public, the
festive occasions for which he wrote his poems, poetic metre
and Arabic music, the fate of the surviving thirty-eight manuscripts,
problems of textual criticism, and the linguistic particularities
of Ibn Sûdûn's use of 15th-century colloquial Arabic.
(In English,
364 pp.)
Arnoud Vrolijk is curator of Oriental
collections at Leiden University Library.
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| No. 69 |
| ISBN
978-90-5789-014-7 |
| 256
pp |
| Leiden 2000 |
| Price:
€ 27,60 |
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this book |
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The Chinese Sonnet. Meanings of a Form
Lloyd Haft
Since the early years of this century, when Chinese poets began to search beyond the time-honored forms of their native tradition for new poetic possibilities, sonnets have been written, read, and studied in China. Many of the most famous Chinese poets have written sonnets, and they have showed great creativity in adapting this form to the sounds and other features of the Chinese language.
Existing studies of modern Chinese poetry have tended to address the Chinese sonnet marginally if at all. In this book, Lloyd Haft shows that the sonnet, far from being a mere curiosity of cultural borrowing, has actually been one of the most perennially vital forms of modern Chinese verse. Discussing more than 50 poems spanning the period from the 1920s to the present, Haft develops analytic strategies which bring out the expressive dimensions of the Chinese sonnet as well as its legitimate claim to 'Chineseness.'
The reading procedures applied in this book shed light not only on sonnets but on modern Chinese poetry in general. Subjects treated include the rhythms and sounds of Chinese as elements of the verse line, rhyme in modern Chinese verse and in Chinese translations of Shakespeare's sonnets, similarities in form and technique between modern and classical Chinese poetry, and the parallels between Chinese poetry and modern Western free verse.
All poems are discussed in English translation as well as in the original Chinese; they include works by Zhu Xiang, Feng Zhi, Bian Zhilin, Zhang Cuo and Zheng Min. Some thirty of these translations have never been published before.
This book will be of interest to readers of poetry in general as well as to students of 20th-century Chinese literature or comparative literature and poetics.
(In English, 256 pp.) |
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| No. 66 |
| ISBN
978-90-5789-007-9
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| 264
pp |
| Leiden 1998 |
| Price:
€ 25,20 |
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this book |
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Narrative Strategies. Essays on South Asian Literature and Film
Vasudha Dalmia and Theo Damsteegt
The fifteen essays collected in this volume present analyses of a wide variety of modern and pre-modern South Asian narratives in Bengali, Hindi, Panjabi, Tamil, and Urdu. While classics such as Hir Varis Shah, Krittibasa's Ramayana, Ruswa's Umrao Jan Ada, and Phalke's pioneering film venture Raja Harischandra come under discussion, texts less widely known, though equally significant, are also analysed in vivid detail. A wide range of analytical methods are applied, including narratology, reception theory, genre theories, rhetoric, and the theory of transtextuality. Though the papers focus on applied analysis, an effort has been made in each essay to explain the basic tenets of the methods used. These methods bring into focus such vital issues as the uses of tradition, the renegotiation of gender roles, and shifts in genre and literary categories.
In its explicit awareness of methodology in the analysis of South Asian narratives, this volume may well be called a pioneering venture.
(In English, 264 pp.)
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| ISBN 90-73782-90-2 |
| 278
pp. |
| Leiden 1997 |
| SOLD
OUT |
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Eindtijd
en Antichrist (Ad-Daggal) in de Islam. Eschatologie bij Ahmed
Bîcân (ca. 1466)
Laban Kaptein
Eindtijd
en antichrist heeft twee hoofdpersonen. De een is Ahmed
Bican Yazicioglu, een beroemde Turkse auteur uit de vroege
vijftiende eeuw; de andere rol wordt opgeëist door de
verschrikkelijke Dajjal (Deccal), de islamitische Antichrist
die op het Einde der Tijden zal verschijnen. Dit boek is de
eerste studie waarin deze boeiende maar nog nauwelijks onderzochte
persoonlijkheden uitvoerig worden behandeld, en het gaat een
eigen weg binnen het vakgebied door stelling te nemen tegen
de gangbare interpretatie van islamitische voorstellingen
over de Jongste Dag.
(In
Dutch, with English summary, 278 pp.)
To
order this book, and for Laban Kaptein's critical edition
of Ahmed Bican, Dürr-i Meknûn, see: http://www.labankaptein.com
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| No.
59 |
| ISBN
978-90-73782-91-4 |
| 336
pp. |
| Leiden
1997 |
| Price:
€ 25,20 |
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this book |
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Le
Panégyrique Mbíímbi. Étude
d'un genre poétique oral yaka (République Démocratique
du Congo)
N'soko Swa-Kabamba Joseph
Pendant
longtemps le panégyrique dynastique mbíímbi
a été considéré comme un phénomène
curieux dont la pratique était réservée
à la cour de Kyáámbvu, le roi des Bayaka.
Mais, soumis à un examen rigoureux et méthodique,
ce chant d'exaltation est apparu dans sa spécificité.
C'est une littérature officielle au service de l'idéologie
de la minorité dominante, dans une société
yaka où les oppositions entre envahisseurs dominants
Baluwa et autochtones dominés Bayaka, sont encore assez
perceptibles.
Par-delà son caractère propagandiste, cette poésie
de cour draine en filigrane la culture yaka commune aux uns
et aux autres, véhiculant la vision du monde du peuple
yaka. D'autre part, ce panégyrique est une esthétique
verbale. En effet, les chantres dynastiques bavwáala,
spécialistes détenteurs de ce genre littéraire,
portent un soin particulier à l'agencement des mots,
et à un choix riche d'images et de symboles qui ne manquent
pas de fasciner leurs auditeurs.
(In
French, 336 pp., incl. maps, bibl. and indexes) |
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| No. 57 |
| ISBN
978-90-73782-88-4 |
| 280 pp. |
| Leiden 1997 |
| Price:
€ 27,60 |
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this book |
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The
Two worlds of Esber. Western Orientated Verse Drama and Ottoman
Turkish Poetry by Abdülhak Hamit (Tarhan)
Petra de Bruijn
The Two Worlds of Esber presents
an analysis of the dramatic structure and poetic features of
Ottoman Turkish verse drama. Drama as a literary genre emerged
in Turkey in the course of the nineteenth century. Until then
the theatre tradition had been handed down orally. From the
eighteen sixties onward verse drama was written with the structure
of classical French plays and with the literary characteristics
of Ottoman Turkish poetry. In modern Turkey verse plays are
still being written and performed.The verse play Esber
of the writer and diplomat Abdülhak Hamit (1852-1937) is
considered one of the best plays of the most important author
of the genre. Written in 1880, it tells the story of Iskender
(Alexander the Great) conquering the Punjab in India, the kingdom
of Esber and his sister Sumru. In The Two Worlds of Esber
the central question is whether it is possible to apply a Western
method of analysis to a non-Western verse drama such as Esber.
The theory of Bernard Beckerman, as developed in his Dynamics
of Drama (1979), provided a universally applicable method
of tension analysis. In The Two Worlds of Esber Ottoman
Turkish verse drama reveals for the first time its dramatic
structure, its poetic language and its relationship with Western
and Ottoman Turkish dramatic and literary traditions.
(In English,
280 pp.) |
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| No. 51 |
| ISBN
978-90-73782-75-4 |
| 284 pp. |
| Leiden 1996 |
| Price:
€ 25,20 |
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this book |
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Gender
and Community in the Kabyle Literary Space
Daniella Merolla
What place do women and men have
in their community? This question is examined in a corpus of
oral and written narratives from Kabylia in the north of Algeria.
Kabylia is a Berber-speaking region that has assumed a dissident
role in Algerian literature and policy. The author's analysis
of Kabyle narrative productions reveals the presence of a complex
male/female dialectic and, in the novels by women writers, of
a female project for a renewed community. The enables the author
to question the current interpretations of Maghrebian gender
relationship (male domination versus femininity reduced to procreation).Through
the investigation of gender and community in narratives told
in Kabyle and in novels written in French by Kabyle authors,
this book clarifies the interactions between oral and written
productions as well as historical issues of the relationship
between the Kabyle community and the Algerian nation.
(In
English, 284 pp.) |
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| No. 39 |
| ISBN
978-90-73782-54-9 |
| 312
pp |
| Leiden 1996 |
| Price:
€ 22,80 |
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this book |
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Kikuyu
gender norms and narratives
Inge Brinkman
Kikuyu Gender Norms and Narratives
is a book about imagination. It offers an interpretation of
the divergent ways in which Kikuyu gender norms are imagined.
The author maps the divergent views on changing morality, identity
and gender relations. Such views can be found in daily conversations,
scholarly articles, political meetings, newspapers and literature,
to mention but a few examples. This book concentrates on literary
imaginations of Kikuyu gender norms, but explicitly links these
to extra-literary imaginations of Kikuyu gender norms.This combination
of divergent sources enables the author to study imaginations
not as isolated instances, but as processes connecting different
texts, various kinds of literature and a number of contextual
circles. Differences in normative imaginations may be expressed
in texts, but can also become manifest in the interpretation
of literature or the status attributed to it. Images in literary
works are not limited to one text, crosscut different texts
and relate to debates in society. This book shows that texts
and contexts, both in plural, stand in dynamic interaction.
(In English,
312 pp.) |
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| No. 38 |
| ISBN
978-90-73782-52-5
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| 356
pp |
| Leiden 1996 |
| Price:
€ 22,80 |
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this book |
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Language
Shattered. Contemporary Chinese Poetry and Duoduo
Maghiel van Crevel
Language
Shattered
is both a history of poetry from the People's Republic of China
and a case study of the oeuvre of a leading Chinese poet. After
the stifling orthodoxy of the 1950s and early 1960s, the terror
of the Revolution (1966-1976) brought official Chinese literature
to a total standstill. At the same time, disillusioned youths
were more or less accidentally exposed to a varied body of foreign
literature and began writing underground poetry. In the 1980s
this poetry scene, now above ground, became one of pluriformity
and proliferation in both official and unofficial circuits.
The brutal suppression of the 1989 Protest Movement gave it
an exile offshoot. The
historical overview in Part I of this book is complimented in
Part II by a discussion of Duoduo's poetry. Duoduo's career
as a poet reflects the vicissitudes of Chinese Experimental
poetry - and his beautiful, headstrong poems merit attention
in themselves. They show that Chinese poetry is not just of
interest as a chronicle of Chinese politics, but as literature
in its own right.
(In
English, 356 pp.) |
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| No.
30 |
| ISBN
978-90-73782-36-5 |
| 222 pp. |
| Leiden
1995 |
| Price:
€ 19,20 |
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this book |
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| L'épopée
de Sunjara, d'après Lansine Diabate de Kela (Mali) |
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| Jan
Jansen, Esger Duintjer et Boubacar Tamboura (red.) |
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Dans la littérature orale africaine, l'épopée
de Sunjara est le récit le plus fameux. Sa valeur
pour la culture africaine est comparable à l'oeuvre
d'Homère pour la culture européenne. L'épopée
de Sunjara raconte l'histoire de la fondation de l'empire
légendaire du Mande, qui représente l'origine
des peuples soudanais.
Tous les sept ans, les griots - les bardes traditionnels
-de l'Afrique de l'Ouest se réunissent sans le
village de Kela, au Mali, pour y assister à la
déclamation de l'épopée de Sunjara.
Lansine Diabate, né en 1926, est 'Maître
de la Parole' des griots de Kela. Voici sa version de
l'épopée de Sunjara.
(In French, 222 pp., incl. index) |
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| No. 25 |
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| 202 pp |
| Leiden 1994 |
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| OUT
OF PRINT |
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Literatuur
en Tweetaligheid
W.J. Boot (red.)
Literatuur en Tweetaligheid is
een bundel die een aantal artikelen bevat over verschijnselen
die zich voordoen in tweetalige milieus, of kringen waarin men
zich binnen één taal van meerdere niveaus bedient.
Dat wil zeggen, groepen waarin van alle deelnemers wordt verwacht
dat zij zich van twee verschillende talen, of taalniveaus, kunnen
bedienen en in beide talen scheppend werk kunnen doen. De thema's
die aan de orde komen zijn wederzijdse beïnvloeding, specialisatie
en vermenging. De artikelen bestrijken een wijd gebied, van
het oude Mesopotamië (Sumerisch-Akkadisch), het Islamitische
Spanje (Arabisch-Hebreeuws), tot aan het Middeleeuwse Europa
(volkstalen-Latijn), India (Sanskriet-Hindi) en Oost- en Zuidoost-Azië
(Javaans-Bahasa Indonesia; Japans-Chinees). Deze bundel is een
poging om aan te tonen hoe misleidend de gangbare 'Romantische'
literatuuropvatting is dat een schrijver alleen in zijn eigen
moedertaal creatief kan zijn, en dat volk en taal, en literatuur
en natie samenvallen. Beide stellingen zijn naïef en onjuist.
Schrijven is geen spontane uiting zoals het kwaken van een kikker
en het krassen van een kraai, het is handwerk dat geleerd moet
worden. Men leert gemakkelijker schrijven in een taal die daarvoor
geoutilleerd is, dan in een taal, ook al is het de eigen moedertaal,
die een gebrekkig vocabulaire heeft, geen voorbeelden kent van
hoe het moet, en niet beschikt over genres of stijlvoorschriften,
of zelfs maar over een spelling. Anderzijds is het een langdurig
proces, dat vele generaties duurt, om van een primitieve taal
een bruikbaar instrument te maken. Het is bovendien een proces,
dat in de regel verloopt onder de asymmetrische beïnvloeding
door een oudere, canonieke cultuurtaal. Uitzonderingen op de
regel zijn eigenlijk alleen de oudste canonieke talen zelf:
Grieks, Chinees, Sanskriet, Sumerisch, Arabisch; misschien nog
een paar maar niet veel meer.
(In
Dutch, 202 pp.) |
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