Canonical Texts and Scholarly Practices: A Global Comparative Approach ed. by Anthony Grafton and Glenn W. Most (review)
Rent from DeepDyve- Canonical Texts and Scholarly Practices: A Global Comparative Approach ed. by Anthony Grafton and Glenn W. Most
How is a canon formed and to what treatment is it submitted once it has been accepted? These are the main questions behind the fourteen fascinating articles in this book. The geographical and chronological areas covered are immense—from Europe to China and India, and from the ancient Babylonians to the Christian Hebraists of the sixteenth century—and the display of learning is impressive. Certain constant features, especially in the treatment of texts, emerge. The canons themselves tended to be formed by the sanction of an acknowledged authority, sometimes a ruler, sometimes even scribes or printers. The works were then submitted over the ages to various forms of interpretation. Commentators struggled with the problems of obscurity. In their endeavors to correct and improve the texts, or to make them acceptable to a contemporary readership, they often imposed on them a meaning very far from what was originally intended.
Alastair Hamilton, senior research fellow at the Warburg Institute, University of London, and a fellow of the British Academy, has held professorships at the Universities of Urbino, Amsterdam, and Leiden, as well as the American University in Cairo. His books include The Copts and the West, 1439–1822; Arab Culture and Ottoman Magnificence in Antwerp’s Golden Age; An Arab Utopia: The Western Discovery of Oman; The Apocryphal Apocalypse: The Reception of the Second Book of Esdras (4 Ezra) from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment; Heresy and Mysticism in Sixteenth-Century Spain; The Family of Love; and The Appeal of Fascism, 1919–45.
