Suchergebnisse

This article presents translations and analyses of some of the earliest known examples of Pashto literature: the poems of a figure known as Mullā Arzānī. The Pashto ghazals of Arzānī reflect a Sufi and messianic religio-cultural milieu in which Pashto is understood to be a divine language. An exploration of Arzānī's poetry and Arzānī's understanding of his own language use presents a strong challenge to the overly deterministic role that notions of "Pashtun identity" have played in Euro-American understandings of Pashto literature. Arzānī's use of Pashto aimed not to express Pashtun ethnic identity. Rather, Arzānī's ghazals position Pashto as an elite language that accords with the messianic and mystical logics of early modern Persianate cultures. Arzānī paired the cosmopolitanism of Persian and Islamic discourses with the particularity of Pashto language as a means to present Pashto as a divine and revelatory language within the messianic milieu of the Roshaniyya movement.

Few articles in the humanities have had the impact of Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton's seminal 'Studied for Action' (1990), a study of the reading practices of Elizabethan polymath and prolific annotator Gabriel Harvey. Their excavation of the setting, methods and ambitions of Harvey's encounters with his books ignited the History of Reading, an interdisciplinary field which quickly became one of the most exciting corners of the scholarly cosmos. A generation inspired by the model of Harvey fanned out across the world's libraries and archives, seeking to reveal the many creative, unexpected and curious ways that individuals throughout history responded to texts, and how these interpretations in turn illuminate past worlds.

Three decades on, Harvey's example and Jardine's work remain central to cutting-edge scholarship in the History of Reading. By uniting 'Studied for Action' with published and unpublished studies on Harvey by Jardine, Grafton and the scholars they have influenced, this collection provides a unique lens on the place of marginalia in textual, intellectual and cultural history. The chapters capture subsequent work on Harvey and map the fields opened by Jardine and Grafton's original article, collectively offering a posthumous tribute to Lisa Jardine and an authoritative overview of the History of Reading.