Faces of the Infinite

Stefan Sperl, a graduate of Oxford (Arabic) and SOAS (PhD 1977), and former staff member of UNHCR (1978-88), is now Emeritus Professor of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS. His publications include articles on Arabic, Islamic and Refugee Studies, as well as Mannerism in Arabic Poetry: A Structural Analysis of Selected Texts (1989), Qasida Poetry in Islamic Africa and Asia (with Christopher Shackle, 1996) and The Cosmic Script: SacredGeometry and the Science of Arabic Penmanship (with Ahmed Moustafa, 2014), which won the Iran Book of the Year Award (2016). His most recent publication is 'The Qur'an and Arabic Poetry' (The Oxford Handbook of Qur'anic Studies, 2020).Yorgos Dedes's teaching includes courses on Ottoman and Modern Turkish language, literature and culture. Since 2005 he has also been teaching at the Intensive Ottoman and Turkish Summer School in Cunda, Turkey. His research interests focus on Ottoman literature and Turkish culture with special reference to frontier epic traditions and relations with Byzantium and Greece. Another area of interest is the aljamiado literature of the Greek-speaking Muslims of the Ottoman empire. Recent publications include a book chapter on Bursa in Europe: A Literary History, edited by David Wallace (CUP 2015), an edition of the Greek aljamiado translation of Süleymân Çelebî’s Mevlid-i nebî (Journal of Turkish Studies, 2013) and an article on Ottoman poetry with Stefan Sperl (“‘In the rose-bower every leaf is a page of delicate meaning’: An Arabic perspective on three Ottoman kasides”, in Eski Edebiyat Çalismalari VIII, Istanbul 2013).

The volume is full of fascinating insights and implicit links and it provides an original overview of poetry in a Neoplatonic vein in the confluence of Europe, Africa and Asia, ranging from the 4th Century CE right up to the modern world.

• Notes on ContributorsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: 'A Thing All Living Faces'PART 1. From Paganism and Eastern Christianity to the Islamic World (fourth to seventeenth centuries CE)1: DAVID HERNÁNDEZ DE LA FUENTE: Neoplatonism and Poetics in Ancient Greek and Byzantine Literature2: STEFAN SPERL: Stages of Ascent: Neoplatonic Affinities in Classical Arabic Poetry3: ALEXANDER KEY: What are Neoplatonic Poetics? Allegory; figure; genre4: KAZUYO MURATA: Beauty Stings: Plotinus and Ruzbihan Baqli on Beauty5: WALTER G. ANDREWS: Ottoman Poetry: Where the Neoplatonic Dissolves into an Emotional Script for Life6: DIDEM HAVLIOGLU: Mihrî Hatun and Neoplatonic Discourse: Legitimation of Women’s Writing in Early Modern Ottoman Poetry7: CARL W. ERNST: Poetry and Ishraqi Illuminationism among the Esoteric Zoroastrians of Mughal IndiaPART II. Jewish Neoplatonism and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim and Christian Realms (eleventh to seventeenth centuries CE)8: ADENA TANENBAUM: Andalusian Hebrew Poems on the Soul and their Afterlife9: JOACHIM YESHAYA: Karaite Poems about the Nature of the Soul from the Muslim East, Byzantium and Eastern EuropePART III. Christian and Jewish Neoplatonism in Italy and Spain (fourteenth to seventeenth centuries CE)10: CRISTINA D’ANCONA: 'Nostro intelletto si profonda tanto': The Philosophical Background of Dante's Paradiso I, 1-12 and IV, 22-6011: SUZANNE STERN-GILLET: Agathon Redivivus: Love and Incorporeal Beauty in Ficino’s De Amore, Speech V12: ABIGAIL BRUNDIN: ‘A Man within a Woman, or even a God’: Vittoria Colonna and Sixteenth-Century Italian Poetic Culture13: COLIN P. THOMPSON: The Ascent of the Soul: Neoplatonic Themes in the Literature of Golden-Age Spain14: TERENCE O’REILLY: The Christian Neoplatonism of Francisco de Aldana in the Carta para Arias Montano15: JULIAN WEISS: A Poetics of Difference: Neoplatonism and the Discourse of Desire in the Early Modern Spanish Love Lyric 339PART IV. Neoplatonism in Modern Poetry: Splintered but Vibrant16: PETER ROBINSON: An Equivocal Echo: Eugenio Montale17: CLAUDIO RODRÍGUEZ FER: Eroticism of the Infinite: Neoplatonism, Kabbalism, and Sufism in the work of José Ángel Valente18: ROBIN OSTLE: Body and Soul in the Arabic Literature of the Americas19: FERIAL J. GHAZOUL: Neoplatonist Echoes in Modern Arabic Poetry: The Case of Mu?ammad ?Afifi Ma?ar20: AHMAD KARIMI-HAKKAK: Shards of Infinitude: Neoplatonist Relics in Modern Persian Poetry21: NESLIHAN DEMIRKOL and MEHMET KALPAKLI: The New Image of the Beloved in the Old Mirror: Reflections on the Neoplatonic Tradition in Modern Turkish Poetry22: DAVID RICKS: Neoplatonists in Modern Greek poetryIndex