Luca Rizzo | University of Münster (original) (raw)

Books by Luca Rizzo

One of the hallmarks of the Arabic literature of the Mamluk era is the very frequent use of seman... more One of the hallmarks of the Arabic literature of the Mamluk era is the very frequent use of semantic ambiguity, a rhetorical tool that saw its final theorisation in this period and the emergence of the canonical form that still appears in rhetorical treatises today: tawriya. After the 1966 publication of Bonebakker’s study on tawriya, few steps have been taken to further our understanding of tawriya’s use in literary practice. Thus, this book investigates two deeper aspects of the art. First, it studies the sources that contributed to the theorisation of semantic ambiguity. Second, it puts theory to the test with a philological and semiotic approach that reveals the reader’s role in the aesthetic success of literary works involving tawriya.

Articles in Peer-reviewed Journals by Luca Rizzo

Asiatische Studien – Études Asiatiques 78 iii, 2024

This essay investigates the use of Islamic legal discourse in literary works and the characterist... more This essay investigates the use of Islamic legal discourse in literary works and the characteristics that this type of intertextuality develops in premodern Arabic literature. Starting with the theoretical classification of legal intertextuality found in works of rhetoric and literary criticism, I analyze ten poetic examples in order to shed light on how legal intertextuality is used by poets to both develop the argumentation within a text and achieve aesthetic goals. Specifically, I analyze two figures of speech that are used to create this intertextuality: Iqtibās, the definition of which is extended to the quotation of or allusion to legal terms, ideas, concepts, and tenets in literature, and tawriya/tawǧīh 2 , which is used to explain how citing technical legal terms conveys twofold meanings. The result is an investigation that looks at both theory and practice and attempts to reclassify legal intertextuality based on the empirical data found in the sources.

Kervan. International Journal of Afro-Asiatic Studies, 2021

The starting-point for this article is the statement made by al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1363) that the Ara... more The starting-point for this article is the statement made by al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1363) that the Arabic word tawriya has the original form (aṣl) *wawriya, corresponding to the pattern (wazn) tafʿila, in which the first radical wāw has been replaced by the segment /t/. I aim to shed light on this derivation postulated by al-Ṣafadī by investigating the major sources of grammatical, morphological, and etymological studies which were then available to him. I analyse the sources chronologically to arrive at a better understanding of developments in morphology in the period from the first authors to al-Ṣafadī's contemporaries. I show that al-Ṣafadī was influenced by the disquisitions of the two main schools of Arabic thought on grammar: those of Baṣra and Kūfa. He was influenced in particular regarding the question of how to attribute the patterns to some words like tawrāt, with the Baṣran grammarians positing that it is fawʿala, and those belonging to the Kūfa school maintaining that it is according to the pattern tafʿala. Moreover, and precisely because some scholars assume that tawriya and tawrāt have a common etymology, al-Ṣafadī postulates that, besides having the same root, they also share the same original form, meaning that both words underwent the same phonological and morphological mutations.

Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale | 54 | Supplemento | 2018 Texts in Between Action and Non-Action. Genesis, Strategies, and Outcomes of Textual Agency, 2018

DOI 10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2018/01/025 This paper engages in a semiotic analysis of a tawriya-e... more DOI 10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2018/01/025
This paper engages in a semiotic analysis of a tawriya-epigram by Šihāb al-Dīn b. al-ʿAṭṭār (d. 794/1392). Mamluk literature is renowned for its extended usage of figures of speech, above all the tawriya, 'double entendre'. The goal of this articole is to shed light on the tawriya, taking into account the Arabic classical theory and presenting a new approach based on semiotics. The subject of my analysis is the most flourishing literary genre of the epoch: the epigram. Within the epigram, the tawriya plays a pivotal role. Its potential is not limited to a twofold reading of the text but rather goes further and creates a second text out from the first, both of which cooperate with one another and shed light upon their respective meanings. Therefore, the epigram by Ibn al-ʿAṭṭār is a construction of several texts, each of which is mutually linked and deeply-rooted in the social and physical environment depicted in the poem: the ḥammām.

Edited Journals/Books by Luca Rizzo

Asiatische Studien – Études Asiatiques, 2024

https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/asia/78/3/html

Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale, 2018

Certificazione scientifica delle Opere pubblicate da Edizioni Ca' Foscari-Digital Publishing: tut... more Certificazione scientifica delle Opere pubblicate da Edizioni Ca' Foscari-Digital Publishing: tutti i saggi pubblicati hanno ottenuto il parere favorevole da parte di valutatori esperti della materia, attraverso un processo di revisione anonima sotto

Book Reviews by Luca Rizzo

QSA Nuova Serie, 2018

Adam TALIB, How Do You Say “Epigram” in Arabic? Literary History at the Limits of Comparison, Lei... more Adam TALIB, How Do You Say “Epigram” in Arabic? Literary History at the Limits of Comparison, Leiden: Brill, 2018, xii, 337 p. Reviewed by Luca Rizzo (Università Ca' Foscari Venezia; Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster)

Organised conferences by Luca Rizzo

Our workshop aims at exploring different kinds of intertextuality and focusses, on the one hand, ... more Our workshop aims at exploring different kinds of intertextuality and focusses, on the one hand, on the functions that intertextual references fulfill in Jewish legal texts such as responsa, Codes, and Classic Rabbinic literature, and works of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), responsa (fatāwā), legal treatises (rasāʾil) and commentaries (šurūḥ). On the other hand, it is intended to analyze how legal discourse enters the purely literary realm through the mention of legal utterances and theological principles into purely literary genres, with reference to the nature of legal intertextuality and its aesthetic use.

The conference can be attended also via Zoom

La genesi dell'agire: quando il testo si incarna e la carne si fa testo

Conference Papers by Luca Rizzo

International Arabic Language, Literature and Rhetoric Studies in the 8th/14th Century Symposium, Marmara University and Istanbul Medeniyet University, December 6-7 2024

This paper investigates the rhetorical analysis of Q. 51:47 and how it became an example of ambig... more This paper investigates the rhetorical analysis of Q. 51:47 and how it became an example of ambiguity especially in the tradition of the commentaries on al-Ḫaṭīb al-Qazwīnī’s (d. 739/1338) Talḫīṣ al-miftāḥ.
Q. 51:47 never attracted the attention of pre-modern scholars of rhetoric and stylistics until al-Qazwīnī classified this verse as an example of ambiguity explicable through the rhetorical device tawriya, making it the standard example of tawriya muraššaḥa. The previous exegetical tradition has never detected in Q. 51:47 a specific ambiguity of meaning that it must be explained in such a way as not to incur anthropomorphistic misinterpretations of the nature and essence of God. Starting from the commentators of al-Qazwīnī’s Talḫīṣ, this verse was accepted as presenting an intrinsic ambiguity which would deviate the understanding of the reader who would be misled by a dichotomy between a proper meaning of a word (ḥaqīqa) and its figurative sense (maǧāz) resulting in the simultaneous presence of two mutually exclusive meanings.

31st Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants (UEAI), 2024

Mocking established authorities, i.e., those who exercise political and/or religious power such a... more Mocking established authorities, i.e., those who exercise political and/or religious power such as rulers, ministers, judges, jurists, etc. is a literary theme that is frequently found within medieval Arabic literature, especially in the anecdote genre. This literary exercise has various possible purposes. First and foremost, it cannot be denied that it is a literary action that assimilates the entertaining and, to a certain extent, moral traits typical of adab prose. However, it can also be understood as an exercise in social criticism through which unedifying behaviours and negative characteristics of those who exercise a position of authority are highlighted. These two sides of the same coin, literary and social, are expressed, in some cases, through parody, not in the sense of a parody of a literary genre, but rather, in being understood as a parody of a public function that is codified at a political and religious level and for which there are specific professional skills and rules of conduct in play. Indeed, the criticism often plays on this very aspect, tending to highlight the shortcomings of people in power by ridiculing their incompetence and unpreparedness. Such anecdotes were often collected into anthologies, only some of which were thematic. This paper explores some examples of this literary genre with a view to investigating which themes were covered and which literary tools were used in order to create the parodic portraits of the figures being satirised within.

Giornata di studi interdipartimentale "La lingua del sacro nelle tradizioni semitiche"

Conference "Lachen und Kritik. Parodien in jüdischen, islamischen und christlichen Kontexten", U... more Conference "Lachen und Kritik. Parodien in jüdischen, islamischen und christlichen Kontexten", Universität Münster, 23-24.10.2023

Workshop des Forum Theorie am SFB 1385 ‚Recht und Literatur‘. Zum Verhältnis zwischen den Hermeneutiken des Rechts und der Literatur. 23-24.03.2021

Eurasian Connections. Graduate Students Workshop, Universität Heidelberg, May 2018

29th Conference of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants, September 10th – 14th, 2018 in Münster

The aim of this paper is to present a first attempt at investigating the use of iqtibās ‘quranic ... more The aim of this paper is to present a first attempt at investigating the use of iqtibās ‘quranic quotation’ as tawriya ‘double entendre’. The analysis will be carried out on a corpus of epigrams, dating back to Mamluk age. Being a narrative, an epigram has to be analysed in terms of textual cooperation between Author and Reader. My purpose is to describe the construction of the Narrative Worlds, in which the encyclopaedic competencies of the Reader meet the stylistic choices of the Author, bringing together fictional and non-fictional, and turning the sacred to the profane.
In his Ḫizānat l-adab, Ibn Ḥiǧǧa l-Ḥamawī (d. 837/1434) provides a classification of iqtibās into maqbūl ‘recommended’, mubāḥ ‘permissible’, and mardūd ‘rejected’. The latter category, especially, contains all those quotations in which a resemantization of quranic words takes place, i.e. a shifting from literal and/or holy meaning towards a new meaning. In this shift, no meaning is lost.
Indeed, the first and the second meaning survive each other, and both contribute to the success of the work of art. Because of the resemantization process, an overlapping becomes possible between the iqtibās and the tawriya. For instance, many examples of iqtibās are quoted by Ibn Ḥiǧǧa in the chapter devoted to the tawriya. However, the Quran is, in its wholeness, a Narrative World. Therefore, it follows that the use of an iqtibās implies the embedding of the quranic Narrative World inside the Narrative World of the composition itself, defined by Eco the “World of the Fabula”.

The Racecourse of Literature. An-Nawāǧī and His Contemporaries. International Conference of the Leibnizpreis-Research-Unit Arabische Literatur und Rhetorik Elfhundert bis Achtzehnhundert (ALEA), Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, May 2018.

Seminario Inerzia e solerzia del testo. Genesi, mezzi, esiti dell'agire testuale, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, dicembre 2017.

Da sempre definita come letteratura della decadenza (inḥṭāṭ), la produzione letteraria di epoca m... more Da sempre definita come letteratura della decadenza (inḥṭāṭ), la produzione letteraria di epoca mamelucca non ha ricevuto da parte degli studiosi l’attenzione dedicata alla produzione delle epoche precedenti. Un’inversione di tendenza ha avuto luogo negli ultimi decenni, duranti i quali maggiori sforzi sono stati dedicati alla ‘riscoperta’ delle forme e dei temi maggiormente diffusi in questo periodo.
Bauer (2013) sottolinea come la letteratura di epoca mamelucca abbia come scopo precipuo la comunicazione, legata in modo indissolubile con la tradizione retorica, che vedrà in questi secoli la sua sistematizzazione e canonizzazione ultima. La scelta di determinate forme letterarie va di pari passo con il crescente uso di figure retoriche, prima fra tutte la tawriya (ambiguità di senso). Ciò si evince anche dalle trattazioni di carattere teoretico che letterati del tempo dedicano a questa singola figura, come ad esempio le opere di al-Ṣafadī (m. 764/1363) e Ibn Ḥiǧǧa l-Ḥamawī (m. 837/1434). Non è un caso che questa figura retorica veda il suo maggior impiego nell’epigramma (qiṭ’a, maqṭū’a), genere che, benché da sempre diffuso nella letteratura araba premoderna, gode di una notevole popolarità soprattutto in epoca mamelucca (Bauer, 2014). Quasi tutti i letterati vi si cimentano, alcuni componendo intere raccolte di soli epigrammi, definiti in modo più preciso come maṯānī e maṯāliṯ, ossia componimenti di due e tre versi.
Scopo di questa comunicazione è proporre la lettura in chiave semiotica di alcuni epigrammi, per indagarne la struttura narrativa basata sulla tawriya. Lungi dall’essere un mero esercizio linguistico, l’epigramma può essere descritto come un’elaborazione su più livelli, una codifica del codice linguistico, il quale richiede una decodifica da parte del lettore. In questo modo si esplica l’agentività del testo, il suo potere di generare godimento estetico nel ricevente, agendo pragmaticamente su quest’ultimo, richiedendone uno sforzo volto a capirne la struttura e le sfumature semantiche, sottese dall’ambiguità delle figure retoriche utilizzate.

Talks by Luca Rizzo

Ca' Foscari University of Venice, 14.05.2021

Call for Papers by Luca Rizzo

The projects “Enactments of Authority: Rhetorical Strategies in Jewish and Islamic Legal Texts” a... more The projects “Enactments of Authority: Rhetorical Strategies in Jewish and Islamic Legal
Texts” and “Canonization and Diversification in Islamic Law and in Arabic Rhetoric in Comparison” of the Collaborative Research Centre 1385 “Law and Literature” at the University of Münster invite you to participate in a workshop focusing on forms and functions of legal discourse intertextuality in works of Jewish and Islamic literature and law.