The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage PDF
Preview The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage
The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History THE MIDDLE AGES SERIES Ruth Mazo Karras, Series Editor Edward Peters, Founding Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History A Forgotten Heritage MARIA ROSA MENOCAL PENN University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia The excerpt appearing on p. v is taken from THE NAME OF THE ROSE by Umberto Eco (translated by William Weaver), copyright © 1983 Gruppa Editoriale Fabbri-Bompiani, Sonzogno, Etas S.p.A.; English translation copyright © 1983 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. and Martin Seeker & Warburg Limited. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. and Martin Seeker &C Warburg Limited. Copyright © 1987 University of Pennsylvania Press. Afterword copyright © 2004 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4011 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Menocal, Maria Rosa The Arabic role in medieval literary history : a forgotten heritage / Maria Rosa Menocal p. cm. (The Middle Ages Series) ISBN 0-8122-1324-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) Originally published: Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987. (The Middle Ages series). With new afterword. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. 1. Literature, Medieval—Arab influences. 2. Romance literature—Arab influences. 3. Literature, Medieval—Research. 4. Romance literature—Research. I. Title. II. Series. PN682.A67 M46 2003 809'.02—dc22 2003065792 Designed by Adrianne Onderdonk Dudden "But now tell me," William was saying, "why? Why did you want to shield this book more than so many others. . . . Why did this one fill you with such fear?" "Because it was by the Phi- losopher. Every book by that man has destroyed a part of the learning that Christianity had accumu- lated over the centuries. The fathers had said everything that needed to be known about the power of the Word, but then Boethius had only to gloss the Philosopher and the divine mystery of the Word was transformed into a human parody of categories and syllogisms. The Book of Genesis says what has to be known about the composition of the cosmos, but it sufficedo rediscover th t Physics of the Philosopher to have the universe conceived in terms of dull and slimy matter, and the Arab Averroes almost convinced everyone of the eternity of the world." — Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix CHAPTER ONE The Myth of Westernness in Medieval Literary Historiography 1 1 CHAPTER TWO Rethinking the Background 27 CHAPTER THREE The Oldest Issue: Courtly Love 71 CHAPTER FOUR The Newest "Discovery": The Muwashshahat 91 CHAPTER FIVE Italy, Dante, and the Anxieties of Influence 115 CHAPTER SIX Other Readers, Other Readings 137 AFTERWORD 155 Bibliography 161 Index 179 This page intentionally left blank Preface Les etymologies arabes assignees par M. Ribera aux mots troubadour . . . ne convaincront ccrtaincmcnt personne. (Alfred Jeanroy, La pohie lyrique des troubadours, 1934) Accident and coincidence play as prominent a role in directing and shap- ing an individual's work as do perspicacity and good sense, perhaps a larger one. In the case of my own interest in how western scholarship has structured its view of the medieval past, both accident and an aging Lady Philology played critical roles. The story bears telling because it is pre- liminary to the discussion that follows, and as a narrative of detection and discovery, I believe it to be typical of the often-blindfolded search for parts of the literary ancestry of medieval Europe that many others have undertaken. I began to study classical Arabic when well along in my graduate study in Romance philology, largely as a lark. I was fortunate enough to find the justification and encouragement for the venture from a professor of medieval Spanish who, as a former student of Americo Castro, was more prone to see the potential value of such an enterprise than most. But what I had assumed to be a somewhat pedantic fling became consid- erably more engaging, because the verb taraba—meaning "to sing," among other things—happened to be on the vocabulary list of the first- year Arabic course I was taking.1 Moreover, one day the Arabist who was teaching the course mentioned matter-of-factly that this taraba was the root of the European word troubadour. I was surprised both by the facility of the pronouncement and by its apparent status of established fact in the world of oriental studies, since in Romance philology nothing could be more remote than such certainty about the origins of the word troubadour. I knew even then that among Romance scholars it was a cause celebre, its origins unknown and dis- puted, a textbook etymological riddle still assigned in Romance philol-
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