SSHRC Insight Grant, University of Toronto (2020–2025)
October 1st-2nd, 2021
At the beginning of next month the Institute for Advanced Study will host a two-day symposium on commentarial practices from across the globe. During the symposium, members of the Global Commentaries working group, along with others, will present papers. They will be joined by a special guest, Dr. Jesús Velasco, who will give the symposium’s keynote lecture.
Please see the programme and abstract book here or visit our Contact Us page for further details.
by Libbie MILLS, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto
For a paper presented at the 2019 Edinburgh meeting of the American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA), I worked through a range of Sanskrit texts
Aṃśumatkāśyapa chapter 96; Aṃśumadāgama 56; Agnipurāṇa 67 and 103; Ajitāgama 73 and 94; Aparājitapṛcchā 49, 50, 52, 109, 110 and 111; Īśvarasaṃhitā 19; Kāmikāgama P32, P58, U33, U34, U35, and U45; Kāśyapajñānakāṇḍa 104; Kiraṇa 63; Tantrasamuccaya 11; Dīptāgama 59; Devyāmata 64; Piṅgalāmata 12; Pratiṣṭhālakṣaṇasārasamuccaya 21; Prāsādamaṇḍana 8; Bṛhatkālottara jīrṇoddhārapaṭala; Mayamata 5 and 35; Mayasaṃgraha 5, along with the accompanying Bhāvacūḍāmaṇi commentary by Bhaṭṭa Vidyākaṇṭha; Mohacūrottara 5; Rauravāgama 44; Vimānārcanakalpa 62, 64, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, and 77; Viṣṇusaṃhitā 24; Śilparatnākara 5; Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra 44 and 45; Suprabhedāgama 54, 55 and 56 ; Somaśambhpaddhati kriyāpāda 10.
on jīrṇoddhāra, the removal (uddhāra) [and replacement] of the old (jīrṇa), for temples and icons.
While the term jīrṇoddhāra clearly implies a renovation, I veer away from translating it in that way, in order to respect the meaning held by the compound itself, which is that of a removal of what is old. The emphasis on the removal side of renovation, as opposed to the replacement side, holds sense when one reads accounts of the great harm that comes from an old object if it is not removed and disposed of. Of course, replacement will follow removal, and much attention is paid in jīrṇoddhāra literature to how that is carried out, but it is the removal of the corrupting force of an old item that is given principal importance in the labelling of the procedure.
[Read more…] about Talking to Yourself: Commentary as FatnotesWe are currently soliciting blog posts from people involved with the Practices of Commentary project who are employed by University of Toronto, in compliance with the CAUT censure. We hope to receive submissions from the wider community once the censure has been lifted. The blog’s audience consists of scholars who may not be specialists, but are interested in learning more. We are open to submissions on any topic related to commentary and are also eager to work with you on ideas that are not yet fully formed.
Blog posts should be between 500 and 2,000 words in length, though this is only a guideline. Images are encouraged. Please provide captions with the image source and alt-text for accessibility. Please include any links that you wish. Footnotes are optional, but if you would like to include them, we request that you follow the Chicago Manual of Style.
For more information or to submit, please email us at practicesofcommentary@utoronto.ca.
Image above: Text of colophon from Sanskrit Manuscript on medicine. Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
J ohn Wyclif (d.1384) is remembered primarily as a British forerunner of the Protestant reformation, under whose supervision the Bible was translated into English. His writings so angered the fourteenth-century church that his bones were exhumed and burned in 1428, in part because his words inspired the Czech reform movement associated with Jan Hus. Most of Wyclif’s admirers today associate him with the Bible translation; indeed, the Wycliffe Bible Society continues to translate the work into every known language. When I gave a presentation on Wyclif’s philosophy several years ago, a colleague later told me that he hadn’t even known that Wyclif wrote philosophy.
[Read more…] about Stanislav of Znojmo’s Commentary on John Wyclif’s PhilosophyMore Future Events will be Posted Shortly
If we consider commentary as a historical practice and a quotable gesture in this way, not only the operativity of the (very tangible) commentary on the page could come into view, but also the ways in which its operational core is used in a multiplicity of polemic, subversive, or creative ways that extend from a very personal dispute to questions of status and even—in a broad sense—to premodern forms of textual politics.”
Lechtermann and Stock, 2020, pg. 4.
Congratulations to Christina Lechtermann and Markus Stock on the publication of their volume, “Practices of Commentary,” published in the Zeitsprünge series. This book arose out of a conference held at the Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main, in December 2018, as part of a working group on Commentarial Practices at the Jackman Humanities Institute in Toronto. At this conference, scholars from both the University of Toronto and the Goethe University convened to consider the boundaries of commentary. The introductory chapter of this volume (by Christina Lechtermann and Markus Stock) presents a number of questions about the nature of commentary and leads into a series of premodern case studies in the fields of Arabic, English, German, Jewish, Latin, and Romance studies. Read the text in full below.
© Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 2020. The print version can be purchased from Vittorio Klostermann or through book stores.
Download the articles from the Practices of Commentary special volume by clicking on the titles below:
Congratulations to Elisa Brilli (University of Toronto) on the recent publication of her new book, co-authored with Guiliano Milani (Université Gustave Eiffel).
In this book, Elisa Brilli and Giuliano Milani construct a biography of Dante Alighieri, delving into various documents and literary works to shed light on this famous author’s life. For more information, see the book’s publication page at Fayard.
“Écrire une biographie de Dante est un défi auquel se sont confrontés nombre de chercheurs. Tandis que les archives se taisent le plus souvent sur la vie du Florentin ou sont d’interprétation délicate, son œuvre contient tant de passages personnels qu’elle pourrait aisément se lire comme une autobiographie. Mais naïve serait la démarche qui prendrait Dante pour un témoin fidèle de sa vie. Dans une enquête conduite à quatre mains, où documents et œuvre littéraire se font écho, Elisa Brilli et Giuliano Milani renouent les fils de ce destin singulier. Celui d’un homme aux prises avec les bouleversements politiques de son temps, à la charnière des xiiie et xive siècles, et dont les expériences, horizons et réactions changent en fonction des contextes qu’il traverse (municipal, seigneurial, impérial, courtisan) ; celui d’un homme qui tenta à plusieurs reprises de façonner sa vie par l’écriture, inventant une forme de récit de soi, aux contenus toujours changeants, entre mémoire individuelle et universelle. Là est sans doute la contribution essentielle de Dante à la culture occidentale.”
Fayard.
Featured image: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS arabe 7290, fol 5r. Maqāmāt al-Ḥarīrī, 1214 (detail). Source: https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc83329
Keywords:
Reception, Genre, Commentaries, Aesthetics, Literariness
Sponsoring Entity:
LLC Arabic
Presentations:
1. A Philological Frame of Mind, Matthew L. Keegan (Barnard C) [#14416]
2. Commentary on al-Jāḥiẓ Manuscripts, Jeannie Miller (U of Toronto) [#14418]
3. The Problematic ‘One’ in a Thousand and One Nights, Muhsin J. al-Musawi (Columbia U) [#14420]
4. Al-Tawḥīdī’s Perception of the Art of Writing and Aesthetics, Nuha Alshaar (American U of Sharjah) [#14649]
Presiding: Lara Harb (Princeton U)
View details in the MLA Convention program online.
Attending this panel requires registering for the MLA Convention, but please check back for select recordings after the session.
Background image: British Library. Egerton MS 872, fol. 199r. Pentateuch with the Hafṭarot, Five Scrolls, and Rashi’s commentary, 1341. Source: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Egerton_MS_872
Friday, October 30, 2020, 9am EST Zoom Meeting
A Practices of Commentary working group presentation by Dr. Amanda Goodman, Department for the Study of Religion and Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto
Featured image: P3861, item 9; folios 62–63. Sanskrit prayer tranliterated in Tibetan script with interlinear Chinese notations and additions. Courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Over the past decade, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the Buddhist communities that flourished in the region of the Dunhuang Buddhist cave site in present-day Gansu province, China. Situated along the old Silk Road (fig. 1), Dunhuang served as a military garrison, way station, and pilgrimage site for well over a thousand years in what was then—and to a certain extent remains—a nexus of a wider regional “crossroads” populated by significant Chinese, Uyghur, and Tibetan communities. Many of these were Buddhist communities that left their traces in the books, buildings, and byways that for centuries lay buried beneath the desert sands.
[Read more…] about A Multilingual Manuscript from Dunhuang: P3861It’s our pleasure to invite you to the official zoom launch of the 5-year SSHRC Insight Grant, “Practices of Commentary,” hosted through the University of Toronto, and gathering colleagues from around the world.
The launch will take place on Friday, August 21, 2020 at
9am-10:30am EST (Toronto) | 3-4:30pm CEST (Germany) | 9-10:30pm SST (Singapore)
At the launch, we will introduce our plans for this first year, particularly in this time of COVID-19, as well as our longer-term goals. There will also be opportunity for discussion and introductions, as well as a short primer on Slack, our community’s digital home, and an introduction to our new project website.
Please reach out to us through the “Contact” emails to find out more.
Background image: British Library. Egerton MS 872, fol. 199r. Pentateuch with the Hafṭarot, Five Scrolls, and Rashi’s commentary, 1341.Source: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Egerton_MS_872
Walid Ahmad Saleh is Professor of Islamic Studies at the Department for the Study of Religion and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. He is a specialist on the Qur’an, the history of its interpretation, the Arabic manuscript tradition, Islamic apocalyptic literature, and Muslim’s reception of the Bible. His first book The Formation of the Classical Tafsir Tradition was the first monograph study ofal-Thalabi (d. 1035) and his influence. His second monograph, In Defense of the Bible, is a detailed study and an edition of al-Biqa`i’s (d. 1480) Bible treatise.
[Read more…] about Walid SALEHI was not going to the USA to study Qur’an commentary tradition. That was not the plan. I came to graduate school to study the Qur’an, in the manner of Biblical Studies (higher criticism). There I was reading up on scholarship on the Qur’an. I read a book on folklore and the Qur’an, and in it the author mentions that one of the most important Qur’an commentaries in Islamic history is still unedited!!!!!!! I said WHAT!!!!! This was 1994. A moment that would define my academic career, a side remark by an author.
[Read more…] about Princeton Arabic mss Garrett no. 2271YSuzanne Conklin Akbari is Professor of Medieval Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Her books are on optics and allegory (Seeing Through the Veil) and European views of Islam and the Orient (Idols in the East), and she’s also edited volumes on travel literature, Mediterranean Studies, and somatic histories, plus How We Write and How We Read. Her most recent book is The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (2020), co-edited with James Simpson. A co-editor of the Norton Anthology of World Literature, Akbari co-hosts a literature podcast called The Spouter Inn.
[Read more…] about Suzanne Conklin AKBARIAndreas Bendlin is Associate Professor of Classics at the Departments of Historical Studies and of Classics at the University of Toronto. He is working on ancient Mediterranean migration, Roman associations, and Graeco-Roman cultural history more generally, but the main focus of his research is religion in the Roman Mediterranean, from the city of Rome and Italy to the Imperial Greek East, and from the archaic period to Roman religion’s Nachleben in the modern world. Current research includes a large-scale project on demography, migration, and urbanism, and their impact on religious pluralism in the city of Rome.
[Read more…] about Andreas BENDLINI am an Assistant Professor (Limited Term) at the Department of Historical Studies, University of Toronto Mississauga. My work focuses on Latin Poetry of the 1st century C.E., and especially on Flavian Epic. My main research project investigates the ways in which imitation and intertextuality in Latin epic poetry create a space for reacting to contemporary philological discussions. I am also interested in the reception of philosophical ideas in Flavian Epic and in the construction of Statius’ literary language.
[Read more…] about Lorenza BENNARDODr. Bouhafa received her Ph.D. from Georgetown University and is now a senior research associate at the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. Her research interests lie in Arabic philosophy and Islamic sciences, focusing on law, ethics, and rhetoric and poetics. In her first book entitled Economy of Contingency in Ethics, Law, and Truth: Ibn Rushd’s Moral Philosophy, currently under preparation, Bouhafa identifies a philosophy of law in Ibn Rushd’s philosophical and legal works which not only assesses the epistemological basis of the Islamic system of knowledge but also admits the necessity of rectifying legal norms to redress ethical deficiencies stemming from the contingency of human actions.
[Read more…] about Feriel BOUHAFAJonathan Brent is the project manager for Practices of Commentary. He received his Ph.D. from Toronto’s Centre for Medieval Studies in June. His research focuses on periodization, anachronism, and the vernacularization of medieval history writing. His dissertation is a comprehensive study of Nicholas Trevet’s Cronicles (c. 1334), an Anglo-Norman universal history most famous for its later use by Chaucer.
[Read more…] about Jonathan BRENTElisa Brilli is Professor of Italian Studies at the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Toronto. She is a specialist on Dante studies, with an interest in the interactions between history and literature, medieval exemplary literature, and historiography. Her first book Firenze e il Profeta provides a comprehensive analysis of the depiction of Florence in Dante’s works from three perspectives: its dialogue with civic memory, its reshaping of theological paradigms, and its autobiographical implications. She is the chief editor of the critical edition of the Alphabetum Narrationum by Arnold of Liège, a 14th-century collection of 800 exemplary tales.
[Read more…] about Elisa BRILLIStefanie Brinkmann is Research Fellow at the Bibliotheca Arabica Project funded by the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig, Germany. During her time as research associate and acting professor for Arabic and Islamic Studies at the universities of Leipzig, Freiburg im Breisgau and Hamburg, she served as research assistant and principal investigator of a number of manuscript projects, and she was a long-term board member of The Islamic Manuscript Association. Her main research interests are manuscript studies, hadith, material culture (especially the history of food and drink), and classical Arabic poetry.
[Read more…] about Stefanie BRINKMANN
