Praise And Threnody

Taking a wide selection of Greek funerary epigrams from the 6th to 4th centuries BC, this volume considers their historical and chronological contexts to draw out information about the society that created them. Using both Hansen's corpus of epigrams and wider examples, it gives priority to those cases where the whole monument ensemble is preserved, both text and image, enabling a much better understanding of the significance of the texts. A thematic structure within a broader chronological framework provides a valuable lens on the epigrams, allowing readers to compare particular types across the time period. After introducing the funerary landscape in which the selected epigrams fit, González briefly considers the literary form of epigrams as a foil for the rest of the book. The remaining chapters focus on epitaphs of individuals in the most significant stages of life, where gender differences are most marked: themes include untimely death, women and wives, friendship, piety and non-kin love. All epigrams are offered in Greek, followed by an English translation. The analysis focuses on the literary aspects of the epigrams, as well as on the information they provide about both society and religion of ancient Greece.

"A new study of the early Renaissance portrait"--

Okatch Biggy was the single most dominant benga artiste of the 1990s. Over that decade, benga was the most important genre of popular music in Kenya. What is it about the music of Okatch Biggy that made it attractive to his target audience, the Luo of the 1990s? Is there something about the Luo of the 1990s that predisposed them to this music? In the course of answering these—and related—questions, this volume analyzes Okatch Biggy’s songs as works of art, that is, by identifying the aesthetic and rhetorical conventions that are deployed in the songs, and explores the central messages that the music transmits. It shows the significance of the meanings in Okatch Biggy’s music for the Luo of the 1990s by situating it in the historical context from which it emerged. Literary instruments of analysis and contextualizing material gathered from various knowledge archives are deployed in the production of the textual meaning of the popular music of Okatch Biggy, which is used here as a lens through which to understand the relationship between politics and ethnicity in the Kenya of the 1990s.The book’s carefully demonstrated argument is that, in both the form and the content of his music, Okatch Biggy undertook a comprehensive culturalist-nationalist project of Luo definition that was persuasive to his primary audience in the highly ethnicized political context in which he became successful. This is a timely study given the current renewed scholarly interest in African popular music that has come on the back of the rise of leisure studies and the reinvigoration of popular culture studies.

"Robert Hazel has written poems that stand, not only apart, but high and alone." -Wendell Berry. Gritty and tender, raw and lyrical, Robert Hazel's poetry illuminates the mystical in the commonplace, the sacred body in the exploited flesh, the human voice amidst the racket of our machines. His vision of America's life never flinches, it never loses faith, and it stays true to this day.

Three-time Hugo Award winner and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption that sharply examine modern society in her first collection of short fiction, which includes never-before-seen stories. "Marvelous and wide-ranging." -- Los Angeles Times"Gorgeous" -- NPR Books"Breathtakingly imaginative and narratively bold." -- Entertainment Weekly Spirits haunt the flooded streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow South must save her daughter from a fey offering impossible promises. And in the Hugo award-nominated short story "The City Born Great," a young street kid fights to give birth to an old metropolis's soul.

With more than 3,000 entries and cross-references on the history, main figures, institutions, theory, and literary works associated with Islam's mystical tradition, Sufism, this dictionary brings together in one volume, extensive historical information that helps put contemporary events into a historical context. Additional features include: · chronology of all major figures and events · introductory essay · glossary of 400 Arabic, Berber, Chinese, Persian, and Turkish terms · comprehensive bibliography Ideal for libraries, as well as students and scholars of religion.

The most broadly accepted explanation of Sufism is the etymological derivation of the term from the Arabic for “wool,” ṣūf, associating practitioners with a preference for poor, rough clothing. This explanation clearly identifies Sufism with ascetical practice and the importance of manifesting spiritual poverty through material poverty. In fact, some of the earliest “Western” descriptions of individuals now widely associated with the larger phenomenon of Sufism identified them with the Arabic term faqīr, mendicant, or its most common Persian equivalent, darwīsh. Sufism, as presented here embraces a host of features including the ritual, institutional, psychological, hermeneutical, artistic, literary, ethical, and epistemological. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Sufism contains a chronology, an introduction, a glossary, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1,000 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, major historical figures and movements, practices, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Sufism.