Faces of the Infinite Neoplatonism and Poetry at the Confluence of Africa, Asia and Europe

Stefan Sperl, SOAS,Yorgos Dedes, SOAS

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: Sacred
Geometry 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).

Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: 'A Thing All Living Faces', STEFAN SPERL AND YORGOS DEDES
PART 1. From Paganism and Eastern Christianity to the Islamicate World (fourth to seventeenth centuries CE)
1. Neoplatonism and Poetics in Ancient Greek and Byzantine Literature, DAVID HERNÁNDEZ DE LA FUENTE
2. Stages of Ascent: Neoplatonic Affinities in Classical Arabic Poetry, STEFAN SPERL
3. What are Neoplatonic Poetics? Allegory; figure; genre, ALEXANDER KEY
4. Beauty Stings: Plotinus and Ruzbihan Baqli on Beauty, KAZUYO MURATA
5. Ottoman Poetry: Where the Neoplatonic Dissolves into an Emotional Script for Life, WALTER G. ANDREWS
6. Mihrî Hatun and Neoplatonic Discourse: Legitimation of Women’s Writing in Early Modern Ottoman Poetry, DIDEM HAVLIOGLU
7. Poetry and Ishraqi Illuminationism among the Esoteric Zoroastrians of Mughal India, CARL W. ERNST
PART II. Jewish Neoplatonism and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim and Christian Realms (eleventh to seventeenth centuries CE)
8. Andalusian Hebrew Poems on the Soul and their Afterlife, ADENA TANENBAUM
9. Karaite Poems about the Nature of the Soul from the Muslim East, Byzantium and Eastern Europe, JOACHIM YESHAYA
PART III. Christian and Jewish Neoplatonism in Italy and Spain (fourteenth to seventeenth centuries CE)
10. 'Nostro intelletto si profonda tanto': The Philosophical Background of Dante's Paradiso I, 1-12 and IV, 22-60, CRISTINA D’ANCONA
11. Agathon Redivivus: Love and Incorporeal Beauty in Ficino’s De Amore, Speech V, SUZANNE STERN-GILLET
12. ‘A Man within a Woman, or even a God’: Vittoria Colonna and Sixteenth-Century Italian Poetic Culture, ABIGAIL BRUNDIN
13. The Ascent of the Soul: Neoplatonic Themes in the Literature of Golden-Age Spain, COLIN P. THOMPSON
14. The Christian Neoplatonism of Francisco de Aldana in the Carta para Arias Montano, TERENCE O’REILLY
15. A Poetics of Difference: Neoplatonism and the Discourse of Desire in the Early Modern Spanish Love Lyric 339, JULIAN WEISS
PART IV. Neoplatonism in Modern Poetry: Splintered but Vibrant
16. An Equivocal Echo: Eugenio Montale, PETER ROBINSON
17. Eroticism of the Infinite: Neoplatonism, Kabbalism, and Sufism in the work of José Ángel Valente, CLAUDIO RODRÍGUEZ FER
18. Body and Soul in the Arabic Literature of the Americas, ROBIN OSTLE
19. Neoplatonist Echoes in Modern Arabic Poetry: The Case of Mu?ammad ?Afifi Ma?ar, FERIAL J. GHAZOUL
20. Shards of Infinitude: Neoplatonist Relics in Modern Persian Poetry, AHMAD KARIMI-HAKKAK
21. The New Image of the Beloved in the Old Mirror: Reflections on the Neoplatonic Tradition in Modern Turkish Poetry, NESLIHAN DEMIRKOL & MEHMET KALPAKLI
22. Neoplatonists in Modern Greek poetry, DAVID RICKS
Index