Cursing the Beloved and Uglifying the Beautiful: Disguised Praise in Medieval Arabic Philology
This work explores the phenomenon of disguised praise through the prism of medieval Arabic philology, via the philologists’ accounts of cases in which a speaker chooses an apparently negative wording to refer to things perceived as positive, by him and/or by others. The main categories of cases that...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2021
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| In: |
Journal of Semitic studies
Year: 2021, Volume: 66, Issue: 2, Pages: 523-552 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This work explores the phenomenon of disguised praise through the prism of medieval Arabic philology, via the philologists’ accounts of cases in which a speaker chooses an apparently negative wording to refer to things perceived as positive, by him and/or by others. The main categories of cases that emerge from rhetorical and grammatical literature are the following three: compliments disguised as curses, taqbīḥ al‐ḥasan ‘uglifying the beautiful’, and ta’kīd al‐madḥ bi‐mā yušbihu al‐ḏamm ‘emphasizing the praise by what resembles derogation’. The reason behind such usages may be pragmatic (viz., the universal tendency to use negative expressions to convey strong emotions), anthropological (viz., a variety of human behaviours developed to avert envy and/or ‘evil eye’), or stylistic (viz., the authors’ attempt at originality). |
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| ISSN: | 1477-8556 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of Semitic studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jss/fgab018 |