Beauty in Arabic Culture (Princeton Series on the Middle East)
Edition: 1st American Ed edition
Publisher: Marcus Wiener
Published: July 1999
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 220
ISBN-13: 9781558761995
Subjects: Cultural studies; Theory of art; Civilization, Islamic; Philosophy; Middle East; Aesthetics; Civilization, Arab; Aesthetics, Arab
First sentence: The Encyclopaedia of Islam includes an entry under the heading "ilm al-djamal" (the modern Arabic equivalent of aesthetics), in which we read that a general theory on aesthetics and "precise definitions for the terms used in this field are lacking in the history of Arabic civilization."
Description: "Doris Behrens-Abouseif's book provides a panorama of the concepts of beauty in classical and post-classical Arabic culture through the 15th century, drawing on Arabic texts from philosophy, theology, mysticism, poetry, and literary criticism as well as historiographic sources and tales from the Thousand and One Nights. Behrens-Abouseif elucidates the ways in which beauty was measured by the degree of pleasure it elicited in the recipient, an attitude that anticipates modernity in both East and West."--BOOK JACKET.