The Well-Tempered Reader: The Legitimization of Adab in the Arabic Literary Tradition
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

The Well-Tempered Reader provides a new understanding of the term adab, a ubiquitous concept in Arabic literature with many meanings. In Sarah R. Bin Tyeer's analysis, adab is more than just a way of writing or the cultivation of moral excellence, as it is often understood. It is rather an ethical way of perceiving, understanding, and living which results from ceaseless critical interaction between the individual and all aspects of his or her social, cultural, natural, and metaphysical environment. Through a close reading of texts from eighth-century Baghdad to nineteenth-century Lebanon in which adab emerges as a force across historical periods and geographies, Bin Tyeer posits the term as a generative literary and cultural framework and a discursive force for analyzing literary acts. This is the first book-length study of adab as an intellectual institution that legitimized its own existence through the formation of adabized subjects, revealing its import not only for Arabic literary studies but for comparative literature as a whole.
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The Well-Tempered Reader: The Legitimization of Adab in the Arabic Literary Tradition
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

The Well-Tempered Reader provides a new understanding of the term adab, a ubiquitous concept in Arabic literature with many meanings. In Sarah R. Bin Tyeer's analysis, adab is more than just a way of writing or the cultivation of moral excellence, as it is often understood. It is rather an ethical way of perceiving, understanding, and living which results from ceaseless critical interaction between the individual and all aspects of his or her social, cultural, natural, and metaphysical environment. Through a close reading of texts from eighth-century Baghdad to nineteenth-century Lebanon in which adab emerges as a force across historical periods and geographies, Bin Tyeer posits the term as a generative literary and cultural framework and a discursive force for analyzing literary acts. This is the first book-length study of adab as an intellectual institution that legitimized its own existence through the formation of adabized subjects, revealing its import not only for Arabic literary studies but for comparative literature as a whole.
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The Well-Tempered Reader: The Legitimization of Adab in the Arabic Literary Tradition

The Well-Tempered Reader: The Legitimization of Adab in the Arabic Literary Tradition

by Sarah R. Bin Tyeer
The Well-Tempered Reader: The Legitimization of Adab in the Arabic Literary Tradition

The Well-Tempered Reader: The Legitimization of Adab in the Arabic Literary Tradition

by Sarah R. Bin Tyeer

Hardcover(First Edition)

$95.00 
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Overview

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

The Well-Tempered Reader provides a new understanding of the term adab, a ubiquitous concept in Arabic literature with many meanings. In Sarah R. Bin Tyeer's analysis, adab is more than just a way of writing or the cultivation of moral excellence, as it is often understood. It is rather an ethical way of perceiving, understanding, and living which results from ceaseless critical interaction between the individual and all aspects of his or her social, cultural, natural, and metaphysical environment. Through a close reading of texts from eighth-century Baghdad to nineteenth-century Lebanon in which adab emerges as a force across historical periods and geographies, Bin Tyeer posits the term as a generative literary and cultural framework and a discursive force for analyzing literary acts. This is the first book-length study of adab as an intellectual institution that legitimized its own existence through the formation of adabized subjects, revealing its import not only for Arabic literary studies but for comparative literature as a whole.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780520424968
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication date: 12/09/2025
Series: Berkeley Series in Postclassical Islamic Scholarship , #7
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 206
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Sarah R. Bin Tyeer is Assistant Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She is author of The Qur’an and the Aesthetics of Premodern Arabic Prose and coeditor of Islam and New Directions of World Literature.
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