January 2014 – Page 3

poetic deception: the truth about fictional lying

Humans have probably been concerned about lying ever since they began communicating actionable information with each other. Suppose Jill knows that there isn’t water up the hill. She tells Jack that there is water up the hill. Jack believes her, because he thinks she’s giving him information useful for fetching water. In such a case, Jill has lied to Jack. She knowingly told a falsehood to Jack in circumstances in which Jack would believe that falsehood to be true.

mosaic plaques, possibly elite theatre tickets, from ancient Egypt

Imaginative work can meaningfully differ from lying. Imaginative work can suspend the usual questions of truth. Imaginative literature is often put in a category commonly and explicitly known as fiction. Imaginative drama is commonly staged in a special place called a theater.[1] Persons can experience imaginative literature and imaginative drama without closely connecting it to their immediate courses of actions. Imaginative work can poetically deceive to instruct abstractly or to delight.

The fourteenth-century Old French petticoat fabliau reverses the truth-structure of lying and simultaneous mixes narrative and drama. In the petticoat fabliau, a wife dupes her husband by enacting a story that the husband believes to be fictional. The wife’s enactment of that story isn’t bracketed from the fabliau’s plot. The wife’s enacted story drives the fabliau’s plot to a conclusion that the wife seeks. The husband believes that the wife’s actions are fiction when they are actually true within the narrative. That might be called reverse lying (communicating as fiction what is really true). It’s a poetic deception. In the scholarly discourse of today, the wife’s poetic deception advances the struggle against the repression of female sexuality.

Al-Farazdaq’s story of the girls at the pond also poetically deceives. Al-Farazdaq evokes for the girls the story of the day of Dārat Juljul. Then al-Farazdaq modestly turns away from the girls. The girls subsequently urge him to tell that story. Al-Farzadaq both tells and enacts the story. He maintains an emotional distinction between himself as narrator (aloof) and himself as actor (sexually ardent). The girls, ignoring that emotional distinction, intentionally redirect the story’s plot and attack the narrator with mud. Betraying an implicit agreement on the story script is a poetic deception.[2] An emotional distinction between narrator and actor, simultaneously represented by the same person, is also a poetic deception. In al-Farazdaq’s story of the girls, the poetic deception of the girls is exploitative and hurtful. The poetic deception of al-Farazdaq reveals important truth about the Muʻallaqah of Imruʼ al-Qays.

Whether poets are liars depends on how and when they recite their poems.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] In his Republic, Book III, Plato distinguished between narration (diegesis) and imitation or acting (mimesis). Pantomimes in the Roman Empire enacted well-known mythic narratives in theaters. The pantomime in a sense was both a narrator and an actor who sequentially represented a number of characters.

[2] The story of the day of Dārat Juljul was well-known in al-Farazdaq’s day. That story is related to the Muʻallaqah of Imruʼ al-Qays. The Muʻallaqah includes the phrase “best of all the day at Dārat Juljul.” The truth of that poem and the subsequent story are subtle poetic questions.

[image] My photo of mosaic plaques on display at the Freer Gallery; from Egypt, 100 BCE – 100 CE; glass, H: 2.2 cm; Freer Gallery, Washington, DC, objects F1909,496A-C. Additional images of mosaic plaques. According to the display placard:

Thousands of miniature plaques made from rectangular and columnar rods of glass have been found in ancient tombs in Egypt. While the original function of these plaques with faces sometimes wearing golden wreaths is uncertain, some scholars believe they were used to decorate furniture. Other experts assert the plaques were possibly utilized by elite patrons as entrance tickets to theater performances.

culturally hybrid literature in medieval Europe

Distinguishing between literary structure and content seems like beating poetry with the dead hand of Plato’s binary opposition of appearance and essence. Can artistic content be more real than Yves Klein’s “zones of immaterial pictorial sensibility”? The Book of Martyrs, first published in 1563, asserted the Church of England’s fidelity to God’s word with a book that had the heft of an immovable rock. Is that material form truly meaningless?[1] Such questions tend to lead to mind-numbing “post-structuralist” attempts to essentialize dominance and ignore the obvious. Plumbers know better. If a tool can clear a clog, use it. The binary opposition between structure and content can help to identify culturally hybrid literature in medieval Europe and clear up blockages in appreciation of that literature.

The literary plumber’s structure-content tool is relatively easy to use. Distinguish between a work’s literary structure and content. In practice, ordinary persons can do that about as successfully as they can distinguish between females and males. Distinguish reasonably between a newly established, dominant culture and a long-settled, subordinate culture. That’s also doable. Hybrid literature affirming the cultural hierarchy tends to use structure from the new, dominant culture and content from the settled, subordinate culture. Hybrid literature critical of the dominant culture tends to use the reverse configuration. That literature uses structure from the settled, subordinate culture and content from the new, dominant culture. This structure-content tool provides a readily understandable means for describing hybrid literature and considering its relationship to supporting cultures.[2]

In terms of structure and content, the fourteenth-century Spanish work Libro de buen amor is culturally hybrid literature. Libro de buen amor’s structure comes from Arabic literature. Its episodic narrative of a roguish clerk is similar to that of the Arabic maqāma genre. The clerk’s failures in Libro de buen amor associate that work with the Andalusī zajal poetry. Libro de buen amor’s framing narrative and embedded stories, including stories used as thrusts in debate, are a structure like that in the Arabic Kalīla wa-Dimna and the Sindibad corpus. Libro de buen amor’s content, however, largely has Graeco-Roman and European Christian sources. Written in Spain after Christians reconquered it, Libro de buen amor uses structure from the settled, subordinate culture (Arabic, mediated partly through Hebrew) and content from the new, dominant culture (Romano-Latin). That’s consistent with Libro de buen amor’s subversive, critical orientation to clerical-scholastic European culture.[3]

The medieval Latin work Solomon and Marcolf is also culturally hybrid literature. Marcolf came to the throne of King Solomon “from the direction of the East.”[4] Solomon and Marcolf’s high-level structure is a confrontation of wisdom authorities like that in the Hebrew Pseudo-Sirach. Solomon and Marcolf deploys explicit, playful, analogical references to bodily functions within literature that also displays high cultural sophistication. That’s similar to Pseudo-Sirach and Arabic literature such as that of al-Jahiz. Solomon and Marcolf culminates in concern about malice toward men and interest in the literature of men’s sexed protests. Serious interest in the question of men characterizes Arabic and Hebrew literature much more than Latin literature. The content of Solomon and Marcolf, in contrast, seems to come from European clerical culture. While it’s written in Latin, Solomon and Marcolf has a colloquial tone and is filled with constructions and words that “could point to an author whose native language was Romance, perhaps French.”[5] All the content of Solomon and Marcolf is consistent with that of Latin and Romano-European literature. Nothing in the content of Solomon and Marcolf clearly draws attention to post-biblical Hebrew literature or Arabic literature. Jews are not explicitly mentioned at all in the earliest, main text, and neither are Arabs.[6] Solomon speaks words of a European Christian preacher, and Marcolf, words of a cunning, perverse European peasant:

Solomon: Four evangelists uphold the world.

Marcolf: Four support-posts uphold the privy, so that the person who sits over it does not fall. [7]

Written in Christian-dominated Europe, Solomon and Marcolf uses structure from the subordinate culture (Hebrew, and more distantly, Arabic) and content from the dominant culture (Romano-Latin). Like Libro de buen amor, Solomon and Marcolf is hybrid literature offering a subversive, critical orientation to clerical-scholastic European culture.

Trotaconventos’s encounter with the Moorish girl in Libro de buen amor confirms the value of the considering hybrid structure and content. Trotaconventos offered the Archpriest of Hita’s love to a Moorish girl. She resolutely refused to accept that offer. In sharp contrast to the preceding, long story-dispute between Trotaconventos and the nun Lady Garoza, the Moorish girl responded with only a few words. Those words are common expressions from Arabic.[8] Medieval European Christian texts characteristically differ from eastern Hebrew or Arabic texts in verbosity:

we are immediately struck by the difference between the direct informative approach of the Christian text and the desire for narrativeness, for expansion and integration of new narrative elements, in the eastern text. … In western tradition the answers are basically brief and relate directly and concisely to the subject. … In eastern texts, on the other hand, the question is merely the starting point for a story, only indirectly of moral or aetiological significance, which provides the answer to the opening question: it is strikingly evident that the questions do not constitute a didactic means but rather a rhetorical device serving as the pretext for telling a tale. [9]

Living in Spain after Christians had reconquered it, the Moorish girl uses structure from the dominant culture (Romano-Latin) and content from the subordinate culture (Arabic words). The Moorish girl thus affirms the existing cultural hierarchy. But within Libro de buen amor itself, the Moorish girl critically opposes the Archpriest of Hita’s quest.

Sophisticated medieval European literature is not a monolith of Latin-Christian culture. Ideas have always moved across Eurasia. So too have people.[10] A division between content and structure in the analysis of Libro de buen amor and Solomon and Marcolf isn’t a perfect model and doesn’t essentialize a conceptual boundary. It provides a useful intellectual tool. It helps to appreciate those works as culturally hybrid medieval European literature.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] For relevant discussion, Galbi (2003), esp. Ch. 4.

[2] This paragraph describes my understanding of the analytical model set out in Monroe (2011).

[3] This paragraph summarizes claims in id. My own view is that Libro de buen amor parodies the mirror-for-princes genre as transmitted through Arabic literature like Secret of Secrets. That alternative is consistent with the above structure-content understanding of Libro de buen amor as hybrid literature.

[4] Solomon and Marcolf Part 1, Prologue, l. 1, from Latin trans. Ziolkowski (2008) p. 53.

[5] Ziolkowski (2008), Introduction, p. 11. Manuscripts of Solomon and Marcolf are predominately associated with southern Germany and Austria, while early printed versions are predominately from northern Germany and Low-German cities, e.g. Antwerp, Cologne, Deventer, and Leipzig. Id. p. 13.

[6] At the peak of its popularity in the fifteenth century, Solomon and Marcolf was relatively popular in:

schools, circles in which the northern European equivalent to humanism flourished, and circles in which scholasticism prevailed.

Id. p. 13. Bradbury (2008), p. 342, states:

The scholarly consensus holds that the Dialogus {Solomon and Marcolf} arose in a clerical context, on the basis of the choice of Latin, the allusions to academic disputation, the abundant scriptural quotations in the speeches of Solomon, and the technical skill revealed in the close syntactic parody of Scripture assigned to Marcolf.

Ziolkowski (2008), Commentary, p. 287, notes, “Jews are not mentioned at all in the main text.” Id. pp. 285-6 provides an alternative verse beginning that starts, “I am King Solomon, who rules the Jews by law.” This alternative beginning probably was included in the Solomon and Marcolf corpus in the fifteenth century. Id. p. 287. Except among various attestations of proverbs and folktales, Ziolkowski (2008) and Bradbury (2008) indicate little distinctive contribution of post-biblical Hebrew literature and Arabic literature to the content of Solomon and Marcolf.

[7] Solomon and Marcolf Dialogue, 38a-b, from Latin trans. Ziolkowski (2008) p. 59.

[8] The relevant text is Libro de buen amor, ll. 1508-1512. On the Arabic words, Monroe (2011) pp. 37-39.

[9] Yassif (1982) pp. 57, 58, 59.

[10] On failures to appreciate adequately the interactions of European literatures with Hebrew and Arabic literatures, Wacks (2010) and Akbari & Mallette (2013).

[image] Hispano-Moresque basin, early-to-mid 15th century. Earthenware with underglaze and luster decoration. Walters Art Museum, 48.1013.

References:

Akbari, Suzanne Conklin, and Karla Mallette. 2013. A sea of languages: rethinking the Arabic role in medieval literary history. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Bradbury, Nancy Mason. 2008. “Rival Wisdom in the Latin Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolf.” Speculum. 83 (2): 331-365.

Galbi, Douglas. 2003. Sense in Communication. Worldwide: Internet Printing Press.

Monroe, James T. 2011. “Arabic literary elements in the structure of the Libro de buen amor,” in parts I & II. Al-Qanṭara. 32 (1): 27-70; 32 (2): 307-332.

Wacks, David A. 2010. “Toward a History of Hispano-Hebrew Literature in its Romance Context.” eHumanista 14:178-209.

Yassif, Eli. 1982. “Pseudo Ben Sira and the ‘Wisdom Questions’ Tradition in the Middle Ages.” Fabula. 23 (1): 48-63.

Ziolkowski, Jan M. 2008. Solomon and Marcolf. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University.

Wednesday's flowers

two purple petals fallen amid green leaves

al-Farazdaq realized Imruʼ al-Qays' poetic revelation

In early Arabic ʻUdhrī poetry, Bedouins were associated with chaste love. ʻUdhrī poets were liars. They passed on only what they heard. They did not write poetry about what was actually done. Imruʼ al-Qays, the leading poet of the pre-Islamic divisive age, told the truth. Imruʼ al-Qays’s poetic revelation in his famous Muʻallaqah can be understood only through fearlessly, poetically, and faithfully entering hellfire with this most poetical of poets.[1]

Equating the persona in a poem with the biography of the poet betrays poetry and the poet. Imruʼ al-Qays and his famous Muʻallaqah have been betrayed. Leading Umayyad poet al-Farazdaq lamented society’s frivolous sacrifice of poetry. Al-Farazdaq told a fellow poet:

Poetry was once a magnificent camel. Then, one day, it was slaughtered. So Imruʼ al-Qays came and took its head. ʻAmri ibn Kulthum took its hump, Zuhayr the shoulders, al-Aʼsha and al-Nabigha the thighs, and Tarafa and Labid the stomach. There remained only the forearms and offal which we split among ourselves. The butcher then said, “Hey you, there remains the blood and impurities. See that I get them.” “They are yours,” we replied. So he took the stuff, cooked it, ate it and excreted it. Your verses are from the excrement of that butcher. [2]

The only proper way to honor the sacrifice of poetry is to separate true poetic imagination from excrement.

The Muʻallaqah of Imruʼ al-Qays describes the reality of sex beneath the officially endorsed social construction of gender in a status-obsessed, fiercely tribal society. The Muʻallaqah begins with the poem’s persona stopping with two companions at a desolate, abandoned home site. The persona laments the personal loss of “one beloved.” He enacts that personal loss by remembering his love affairs with the mother of al-Huwayrith and her neighbor, the mother of al-Rabāb. Having sex with your own mother is mythic. Having sex with two mothers next door is mundane reality, then and now. The poetic persona recalls to himself, “Did you not have many a fine day from them?”[3]

The poetic persona then recounts a series of other sexual memories. The first is specified only superlatively: “and best of all the day at Dārat Juljul.” The second sexual memory was sacrificing his camel for girls who enjoyed playing with their food, and probably playing with the poetic persona, too:

And the day when, for the virgins,
I hocked my mount,
— What an amazing sight! — they made off
with her saddle and its gear!
Then through the day the virgins
tossed her meat,
And her fat like twisted fringes
of white Damascus silk.

The third sexual memory was the day he jumped into ʻUnayzah’s howdah. ʻUnayzah repeatedly told the poetic persona to withdraw as the howdah moved with their weight. The persona responded:

Keep going, I said to her,
slacken his reins,
But don’t drive me away from your
twice-to-be-tasted fruit!
Then many a woman like you, pregnant and nursing,
have I visited by night,
And distracted from her amuleted
one-year-old.
When he cried from behind her, she turned
her upper half toward him,
But the half that was beneath me
did not budge.

That sexual memory has within itself another embedded, enacted sexual memory, that of outrageous sex with a pregnant, nursing mother. A leading scholar of early Arabic poetry has observed:

In light of the pre-Islamic belief that sexual intercourse with a nursing mother is harmful to the nursling, she is endangering her children, born and unborn, as well as betraying her husband, the father, or pater putativus at least, of her nursling and unborn child. These details enhance the illicit and antisocial aspect of the liminal erotic encounter. [4]

That day at Dārat Juljul has tended, among readers, to roll together these distinct sexual memories.

The danger of revelation is emphasized in the persona’s further sexual memories. Conflating many females with a single female, the persona brags that “many … whose tent none dares to seek,” he took pleasure with, unhurried. The nature of the danger is then immediately described:

I stole past guards
to get to her, past clansmen
Eager, could they conceal it,
to slay me.

Yet the poetic persona gets the girl. He led her forth from her tent. Her silken gown dragged on the ground and obscured their tracks.

Al-Farazdaq attempted to honor in life Imru’ al-Qays’s poetic revelation. He repeatedly told the story of his experience.[5] One day al-Farazdaq found some mule tracks heading out of Basra, where he lived. Motivated by the thought that the riders surely carried food and drink, al-Farazdaq followed their tracks on his own mule. He came across girls bathing in a pond. He said to them, “I have never seen anything like today, not even the day of Dārat Juljul.”[6]

By al-Farazdaq’s time, a story of Dārat Juljul had arisen about the day at Dārat Juljul in Imruʼ al-Qays’s poem. Imruʼ al-Qays was in love with his cousin ʻUnayzah. One day ʻUnayzah’s clan moved. Imruʼ al-Qays followed them. ʻUnayzah and other girls of her clan stopped to bath in a pond. After telling their slaves to move away a distance, the girls undressed completely and submerged themselves in the pond. Imruʼ al-Qays sneaked upon them. After seizing their clothes, he proclaimed:

By God, I won’t give a single one of you girls her clothes, not though she stays in the pond all day, until she comes out of the water naked and takes her clothes herself. [7]

The girls resolutely remained in the pond until the day was well advanced. Then one by one they surrendered, except for ʻUnayzah. She implored Imruʼ al-Qays in the name of God to release her clothes to her in the pond, but he would not compromise. Finally, ʻUnayzah surrendered and came out of the pond, naked. He looked at her, front and back, and then laid down her clothes. After his siege and their surrender, the girls lamented:

You’ve certainly punished us, keeping us here your prisoners and starving us! [8]

Imruʼ al-Qays offered them a feast of reconciliation:

He said, “what if I were to slaughter my camel for you, would you eat of it?” “Yes,” they shouted. So he drew his sword and hamstrung the beast, then he slaughtered it and stripped off its flesh. The servants collected a great pile of brushwood and kindled up a mighty fire, and he set to hacking off the choicest pieces for them and throwing the meat on the glowing embers. The girls ate, and he ate with them, and drank the remainder of the wine he had with him, singing to them between-whiles and flinging to the slaves some of the roast meat. [9]

When time came to depart, each girl carried a piece of Imruʼ al-Qays’s gear, except for ʻUnayzah. Imruʼ al-Qays declared that ʻUnayzah would carry him. He thrust himself into her howdah and rocked it. That’s the story of Dārat Juljul, the story about the day at Dārat Juljul in Imruʼ al-Qays’s poem.

Al-Farazdaq said to the girls bathing in the pond, “I have never seen anything like today, not even the day of Dārat Juljul.” He then modestly turned away from them. He did not then capture and hold their clothes. That wasn’t the end of the story:

they called out to me {al-Farazdaq}: “Hey you, you with the mule, come back, we want to ask you something!”
So I turned back, while they were still up to their necks in the water.
“Come on,” they said, “you must tell us the story of Dārat Juljul!” [10]

Like the heroine in the fourteenth-century Old French petticoat fable, al-Farazdaq not only told the story, but also enacted it. When al-Farazdaq got to the point in the story where Imruʼ al-Qays seized the girls’ clothes, al-Farazdaq jumped down from his mule and seized the girls’ clothes. He declared:

… and {Imruʼ al-Qays} said to them, just as I say to you: “By God, I shall not give any of you girls your clothes, even if you stay in the pond all day, until you come out naked.”

One of the girls, a saucy one, interjected:

That man was in love with his cousin; are you in love with one of us then?

Al-Farazdaq responded unartfully:

No, by God! I am not in love with any of you, but I do find you attractive.

The girls were amused and responded guilefully:

they shouted and clapped their hands, and said, “Go on with your story, since you won’t leave before you’ve got what you want!”

Al-Farazdaq continued the story of Dārat Juljul. When he finished that story, the saucy girl said:

Well, well, that was a damn good story, very nice indeed! Who are you mister?

Al-Farazdaq humbly demurred. She insisted. She guessed his identity and asked him directly whether he was al-Farazdaq, the famous poet. Al-Farazdaq confessed to his actual identity. She declared:

If you are he, then I think you won’t part with our clothes unless you’ve had your way.

Al-Farazdaq agreed to enacting that plot. She then ordered him: “Turn away for a second!” She whispered to her friends. Then all the girls dived down. They came out of the pond with their hands filled with mud:

They approached me, menacingly. They smeared my face with mud and slime, filling my eyes and covering my clothes. I fell on my face and while I was distracted by the dirt in my eyes they grabbed their clothes and absconded with them. The saucy one sat on my mule and left me flat on my face, in the worst possible state, covered in shame: {the saucy girl said,} “That bloke thought he could fuck us!”

“Fuck us” is a general folk metaphor for “treat us badly.” It’s far from the poetry of the sexual exploits in the Muʻallaqah of Imruʼ al-Qays. The difference is not just between informal speech and the written word. The girls returned al-Farazdaq’s mule along with a written message:

Your sisters say to you: “You tried to get something from us that we would not give, but we hereby give you back your wife; now fuck her all night! Here are a few pennies for the public bath in the morning!”

Al-Farazdaq married at least four times. He made no original effort to seduce the girls.[11] The girls’ urging him to have sex with a mule, described as his wife, is unrighteous vindictiveness in the form of a crude insult.

The Muʻallaqah of Imruʼ al-Qays is about social regulation of sexuality, not the life of Imruʼ al-Qays. Biographical stories about Imruʼ al-Qays tell of him allying with the Byzantines and dying from betrayal far from home.[12] Despite Imruʼ al-Qays’s unpropitious biography, the Muʻallaqah of Imruʼ al-Qays has been one of the most revered poems in Arabic for more than 1400 years.[13] It ends with a massive natural storm and two final verses pairing images of renewal and destruction:

As if, early in the morning,
the songbirds of the valley
Had drunk a morning draught
of fine spiced wine,
As if the wild beasts drowned at evening
in its remotest stretches
were wild onions’
plucked-out bulbs. [14]

Outside the most poetical of poetry, the acts of the poetic persona and the mothers who had sex with him in the Muʻallaqah of Imruʼ al-Qays mainly generate violence against men. Through its theatrically enacted bi-narrative, al-Farazdaq’s story of the girls overturns the biographical story of the day of Dārat Juljul.[15] The girls in that story represent vicious social disparagement of male sexuality. Crude misandry is as much of a social problem as is the illicit sexuality in the Muʻallaqah.[16] Civilizing human nature, sexually distinctive like male stallions and female whisperers, requires truthful recognition of what women and men actually do. Truthful, hellish views are necessary to have renewal rather than destruction.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Cf. Qurʼan, Surat Ash-Shu‘arā (26), v. 221-227. According to a hadith, Imruʼ al-Qays was “the most poetical of the poets, and their leader into Hell-fire.” Trans. Arberry (1957) p. 40. Similarly, Stetkevych (1993) p. 285, citing ibn Qutaybah, Al-Shiʻr wa al-Shuʻarāʼ 51.

[2] From Qurashi, Jamhara, trans. Khalidi (1994) p. 98. The poets listed are seven associated with the famous hanging odes (Mu‘allaqāt). Some sources exclude al-Aʼsha and al-Nabigha from this group. That both were famous poets isn’t contested. Imruʼ al-Qays taking the head represents a widely held view that he was the leading pre-Islamic poet. Jamhara cites Abu ʻUbayda saying, “Poetry was launched by Imruʼ al-Qays and ended with Dhu al-Rummah.” The latter died c. 735. Id. p. 98, n. 27.

[3] Muʻallaqah of Imruʼ al-Qays, l. 10 (part), from Arabic trans. Stetkevych (1993) p. 250. Id., p. 263, attributes this line to the poetic persona’s companions, but it seems to me to work as a self-voiced question. Stetkevych translates an Arabic verse as four lines of English text, with alternate lines indented. Because of technical challenges, I have not indented alternate lines in quoting from id. The translation of F. E. Johnson and Faiz-ullah-bhai, from Horn (1917), is available online. All subsequent quotations of the Muʻallaqah are from Stetkevych (1993) pp. 250-2; specifically , l. 10 (part), ll. 11-12, ll 15-17, l. 24.

[4] Stetkevych (1993), p. 265. Id. p. 262, n. 30 observes:

The offspring of an illicit affair with a married woman would be reckoned to the paternity of her husband, according to the old Arab precept that lies behind the Islamic precept that the child is reckoned to the bed on which he is born (al-walad lil firāsh).

Underscoring the continuing relevance of the Imruʼ al-Qays’s Muʻallaqah, the same long-established principle remains in U.S. paternity law.

[5] That story is given a bushy isnād:

ʻAbd Allāh ibn Mālik related to us: Muḥammad ibn Mūsā related to me: al-Qaḥdhamī related to me: one of our friends related to me, on the authority of ʻAbd Allāh ibn Zālān al Tamīmī, the rāwī of al-Farazdaq, that al-Farazdaq said:

From Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, al-Aghānī, XXI:340-3, from Arabic trans. van Gelder (2013) p. 123. An isnād is usually a linear chain. The last sentence of the story, the meta-comment, “Whenever he told this story….” indicates that the story was told repeatedly.

[6] Id. I consistently use the term “girls” to refer to the young, sexually mature, unmarried females in the stories. In many cultures, such females are commonly distinguished from other women.

[7] From Arabic trans. Arberry (1957) pp. 33-4. Stetkevych (1993), p. 264, n. 33, states that Arberry’s translation is from ibn Qutaybah, Al-Shiʻr wa al-Shuʻarāʼ 49-50. Al-Farazdaq died in Basra c. 728. Ibn Qutaybah died in Baghdad in 885. Al-Iṣfahānī died in Baghdad in 967.

[8] From trans. Arberry (1957) p. 34.

[9] Id. I’ve made some insubstantial changes in the quotation for consistency.

[10] From al-Iṣfahānī, trans. van Gelder (2013) p. 123. Subsequent quotes are from id., pp. 123-6, unless otherwise noted.

[11] In the beginning of al-Farazdaq’s story, he heads out from Basra into the desert to follow persons that he thinks are carrying food and drink. Surely many more persons had food and drink within Basra. Al-Farazdaq going out into the desert to get food and drink seems to me meant retrospectively to raise skepticism about his desire for sex. Moreover, al-Farazdaq turns away from the girls in the pond after his declaration about the day at Juljul. Only at the girls’ urging does he tell and enact the story of that day. When the girls bluntly ask, “are you in love with us?”, al-Farazdaq, quite unlike ardent, poetic Arabic lovers, declares comically, “No, by God! I am not in love with any of you, but I do find you attractive.”

[12] Stetkevych (1993), Ch. 7, discusses these stories and analyzes the Muʻallaqah in light of them. Id. p. 283 notes, “The relation of Imruʼ al-Qays’s Muʻallaqah to his akhbār is such as to undermine the working premise of this entire book.” I don’t find the subsequent rationalization compelling. More generally, structural concepts such as rites of passage seem to me to be too abstract and too deterministic to address the complexity of personal development. They also tilt interpretation in favor of biography over social structure.

[13] Arberry (1957), pp. 39-40, declares:

The fame of Imruʼ al-Qays was widespread during his lifetime; after his death he gained even greater renown. … It is no exaggeration to say that his Muʻallaqah is at once the most famous, the most admired and the most influential poem in the whole of Arabic literature.

By the tenth century, children were being taught Imruʼ al-Qays’s Muʻallaqah in Islamic elementary schools (kuttāb). Kister (1969) p. 36. In a fictional, eleventh-century Arabic tale filled with realistic details, a believing jinnee declares:

you, race of humans, are rapturous about Imruʼ al-Qays’s poem, “Stop, let us weep for the remembrance of a loved one and dwelling place,” and make your children learn it by heart at school.

Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī, Risālat al-ghufrān, trans. van Gelder (2013) p. 271. In my view, that’s astonishing testimony to learned critical blindness.

[14] ll. 81-81, trans. Stetkevych (1993) p. 257.

[15] The story ends with meta-text:

Whenever he told this story, he would say, “I have never again met their like.”

Trans. van Gelder (2013) p. 126. The girls, like the poetic persona in Imruʼ al-Qays’s Muʻallaqah, are encountered only in the story or poem.

[16] Without little appreciation for the truth of ordinary men’s lives, Jones (2011), p. 338, observes of the sexual exploits in Imruʼ al-Qays’s Muʻallaqah:

I have no doubt that the appeal of this section to the male Arab psyche has added much to the poem’s general popularity over the centuries.

Do you think that the same is true for the female Arab psyche? And what about the children?

[image] House of Fabergé, Rose Trellis Egg; In 1907, Russian Tsar Nicholas II presented this egg to his wife, Alexandra Fedorovna, to commemorate the birth of their son. Image thanks to Wikipedia and the Walters Art Museum.

References:

Arberry, Arthur J. 1957. The seven odes: the first chapter in Arabic literature. London: G. Allen & Unwin.

Gelder, Geert Jan van. 2013. Classical Arabic literature: a library of Arabic literature anthology. New York: New York University Press.

Horne, Charles Francis. 1917. The sacred books and early literature of the East with an historical survey and descriptions, vol. V. New York: Parke.

Jones, Alan. 2011. Early Arabic poetry: select poems. Reading: Ithaca Press.

Khalidi, Tarif. 1994. Arabic historical thought in the classical period. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Kister, M.J. 1969. “The Seven Odes: Some Notes on the Compilation of the Muʿallaqāt.” Rivista degli Studi Orientali 44: 27-36.

Stetkevych, Suzanne Pinckney. 1993. The mute immortals speak: pre-Islamic poetry and the poetics of ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Marcolf challenged Solomon on malice toward men

I spread out my hands to the heavens,
and lamented my ignorance of her.
…
Draw near to me, you who are uneducated,
and lodge in the house of instruction.
…
let your souls receive instruction;
it is to be found close by. [1]

Solomon and Marcolf matches King Solomon, eminent author of wisdom and ruler from the magnificent temple at Jerusalem, with Marcolf, an ugly, rude peasant. Solomon and Marcolf was a highly popular work in medieval Europe. In a status-based, hierarchical, and illiberal society, Solomon and Marcolf could never pass through the social machinery of moralistic screening and mass marketing. That makes this medieval work particularly important in the U.S. today. Without Marcolf, the balance in Solomon’s wisdom sinks with malice toward men.

Solomon and Marcolf plausibly has roots in the Wisdom of ben Sirach. Translated from Hebrew into Greek about 2200 years ago, the Wisdom of ben Sirach (Sirach) was included in some versions of the Jewish bible. The last section of Sirach is a Hebrew acrostic known as the Alphabet of ben Sirach.[2] The Alphabet of ben Sirach narrates a poetically abstract autobiographical quest for wisdom. In the Hebrew bible, Solomon is a paragon of wisdom. Jewish tradition attributes to Solomon authorship of the biblical books Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. The quest for wisdom in the Alphabet of ben Sirach points toward Solomon.

The Alphabet of ben Sirach apparently contributed to an outrageous parody challenging the wisdom of Solomon. Perhaps at the end of the ninth century under the Abbasid caliphate in present-day Iraq, learned Jews created for ben Sirach two new Hebrew acrostics based on proverbs from a variety of sources, as well as additional supporting biographical narrative and question-answer dialogue. This alternate wisdom of ben Sirach survives in several interrelated forms collectively called Pseudo-Sirach.[3] Although written in Hebrew, Pseudo-Sirach is generically similar to some work of the eminent and stylish Arabic provocateur al-Jahiz. Within the cosmopolitan, multi-religious culture of the Abbasid caliphate centered in Baghdad, Pseudo-Sirach could have drawn upon a wide range of cultural and literary sources.[4]

Like Solomon and Marcolf, Pseudo-Sirach mocks formal learning and eminent, established authority with low bodily stories and attention to a broad horizon of social justice. In Pseudo-Sirach, ben Sirach is born from an encounter with water of a bath house in which Jeremiah had been forced to masturbate. Ben Sirach’s counterpart is the Neo-Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, destroyer of Solomon’s temple and, in Pseudo-Sirach, Solomon’s son by the Queen of Sheba. Ben Sirach has wondrous wisdom about the lower bodily stratum. Nebuchadnezzar said to ben Sirach:

I have a daughter who expels a thousand farts every hour. Cure her!

Ben Sirach knew a cure:

Every time a fart was about to come, the king’s daughter stood up on one foot and stretched her eyes wide, as ben Sira told her to do, and she contained herself and closed her mouth slowly, until the breaking of the wind stopped completely. After three days no farts came from her behind.

Nebuchadnezzar then shifted questioning from the practical to the philosophical:

Why were farts created?

Ben Sirach provided a practical-philosophical-tragical-comical answer:

If not for breaking wind, a person would have diarrhea and defecate in his clothes. But when a person feels that he is about to fart, he goes and attends to his needs so that he will not be embarrassed and sit in filthied clothes.

Imitating a program like that of Aristotle’s Problemata, Nebuchadnezzar then asked why there’s one hair in each follicle on a man’s head, why mosquitoes were created, why the ox doesn’t have hair under its nose, and similar questions. Asked why the donkey urinates in the urine of another donkey, ben Sirach explained:

God said to them {the donkeys}: “When your urine flows as rivers and a water mill can be made thereby to turn, and when the odor of your excrement is like the aroma of spices, I will give you your reward.” That is why they smell their excrement and urinate as they do. [5]

That description seems to allude parodically to practices in a decadent, insular community of scholars and litterateurs. Ben Sirach’s wisdom, “a kind of academic burlesque,” is world-encompassing.[6] Ben Sirach’s wisdom is like Marcolf’s in Solomon and Marcolf.

Both Pseudo-Sirach and Solomon and Marcolf parodically pair aphorisms. For example, Pseudo-Sirach re-interprets men seeking a social equal into men accepting marital fate:

Always marry only a well-born woman, even {one} naked, and not one beneath your social standing {even if she is} dressed with gold, since for anyone who marries a woman {for money}, a month comes and a month goes and the money is gone.
Gnaw the bone that falls to thy lot whether it be good or bad.

Another pair of aphorisms extends sharing to fish (who might return the favor in paying taxes):

Always share your food with everyone.
Send your bread upon the waters and upon the land, for after many days you will get it back. [7]

Solomon and Marcolf similarly re-interprets the cost of suspicion into recognition of the harm of paternity fraud:

Solomon: A suspicious person never rests.
Marcolf: A cuckold suffers two things, injury and insult.

With earthly wisdom like ben Sirach’s, Marcolf specifies important entreaties of a wife:

Solomon: Despise not the sober entreaties of a wife!
Marcolf: When your wife wishes herself to be enjoyed, do not deny her, because she has need. [8]

Playing with connections between aphorisms undermines their atomistic authority. The relative weight of contrasting proverbs in common discourse affects the balance of wisdom.

A key issue of wisdom is the question of men. Unless penetrated by an external force, human culture inevitably slips into tyrannical gyno-idolatry. In academic terms, both Pseudo-Sirach and Solomon and Marcolf interrupt and interrogate the social construction of gyno-idolatry. More specifically, in Pseudo-Sirach, ben Sirach, at the infantile age of one year, seeks a teacher. The teacher conventionally begins teaching this child prodigy the alphabet. When the teacher pronounces the first letter of the alphabet for ben Sirach to repeat, ben Sirach responds with a proverb starting with that letter:

Abstain from worrying in your heart, for worry has killed many.

This extraordinary knowledge of an untaught infant throws the teacher into introspective panic. The teacher responds:

I don’t have a worry in the world, except for the fact that my wife is ugly.

Recomposing himself, the teacher pronounces the second letter for ben Sirach to repeat. Ben Sirach responds with a proverb starting with that letter:

By a beautiful woman’s countenance many have been destroyed, and numerous are all her slain ones.

The teacher responds:

Are you telling me this because I revealed my secret and told you that my wife is ugly? Do you find it wrong that I told you my secret?

The teacher asked ben Sirach to say another letter. Ben Sirach declared:

Give over your secrets to one in a thousand even if your friends are many.

The teacher answered:

To you alone, to no one else, have I revealed my secret. Advise me about what I am going to tell you. I want to divorce my wife on account of an especially beautiful woman who lives in my courtyard. [9]

Ben Sirach’s instruction to his teacher on men’s relations with women continues through the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Most men are sexually attracted to beautiful, young women. Most men are thus prone to gyno-idolatry. That’s a problem that societies must solve while respecting men’s goodness, dignity, and right to justice under law. As wise infant ben Sirach taught, gyno-idolatry prevents men from achieving full self-realization.

In Solomon and Marcolf, Marcolf exposes Solomon’s implicit gyno-idolatry in practice. Marcolf first challenges child-custody sexism implicit in Solomon’s choice among two mothers for the custody of a baby boy:

Marcolf, arising, said to the king, “How do you know that this is the boy’s mother?” Solomon responded, “By her emotion, change of demeanor, and shedding of tears.” Marcolf: “You are not showing good sense. So you believe in a woman’s tears? In your wisdom, are you ignorant of a woman’s wiles?” [10]

A vast historical literature describes women’s wiles. Dodging the factual question and blatantly ignoring wisdom, Solomon makes the now-conventional declaration that not all women are like that. Solomon then shifts to an ad hominen attack against Marcolf (your mother’s a whore! you slander women!) In response to Marcolf’s reasonable questioning of his wisdom, Solomon characteristically couples malice toward men with gyno-idolatry:

You lie, worst of men. Every man is the worst who speaks badly of women. For of woman every man is born, and he who dishonors the female sex is to be slandered greatly. What good are riches, kingdoms, possessions, gold and silver, gems, precious clothing, expensive banquets, joyous times, and delights without a woman? Truly he can be called dead to the world who is separated from this sex. Woman produces sons and daughters, nurtures them, cherishes them, embraces them, hopes for their health, puts herself up against death to save them. Woman rules the home; she is concerned with the health of husband and family. Woman is the delight of kings, sweetness of young men, solace of old men, gladness of boys. Woman is the joy of the day, mitigation of the night, relief of toils. May God protect women, as I want, so that my entrance and exit may be protected. [11]

Solomon orders Marcolf not to speak badly of women in his presence. Men are not socially permitted to criticize women. Tyrannical gyno-idolatry has silenced men’s sexed protests.

Solomon and Marcolf depicts de facto matriarchy. Marcolf lies to the woman to whom Solomon awarded the baby boy. Marcolf tells her that Solomon has changed his mind and will now split the baby. Marcolf also declares that Solomon has decreed that each man will take seven wives. That decree arithmetically suggests that Solomon also decreed that six-sevenths of men will be eliminated. Men’s deaths have never attracted much social concern. The woman believes Marcolf’s lies and quickly generates outrage about Solomon’s injustice to women:

A gathering of matrons comes about, neighbor woman reports to neighbor woman, an immense uproar arises, and in a short time all the women of the city flock together. Having flocked together, they approved the plan of going in a formation to the palace, attacking the king, and opposing his commands. And in fact almost seven thousand women, coming to the court, surrounded the palace of King Solomon, and, having made an attack, broke its doors. Then, attacking the king, they inflicted horrible abuse upon him and his counselors. Indeed their extreme rage exceeded all bounds, and one more, another less, they all let forth cries before the king in an immense uproar. [12]

Solomon seeks from the women the cause of this violence. Apparently thinking that the women are joking, he smiles and responds with a jest. The women cry out that Solomon is mocking them and that he is a bad man. Having women say that he is bad is more than Solomon can take. He bursts out in anger with a patchwork of wisdom from the Wisdom of ben Sirach.[13] Yet if such wisdom had weighed more in guiding his action, Solomon would have understood the problem. The prophet Nathan arises and counsels Solomon:

He must sometimes be blind, deaf, and dumb who desires to be at peace with his subjects.

Ignoring the women wasn’t a practical option at this advanced stage of the uproar. Marcolf then leaps up, declares that Solomon has acted according to his social plot, and declares, “No one ought to believe whatever one hears.”[14] Marcolf has revealed women’s readiness to perceive injustices against women. Marcolf has also revealed the imbalance of Solomon’s wisdom in practice. Enraged at Marcolf for these revelations, Solomon banishes Marcolf from the palace.

Much learning is a dangerous thing. Wisdom, separated from justice, is status-seeking, not knowledge.[15] Let Marcolf speak and listen to him.

* * * *

Notes:

[1] Wisdom of ben Sirach (Sirach) 51:19, 23, 26.

[2] Sirach 51:13-30. Sirach is also called Ecclesiasticus. Ben Sirach is also transliterated as ben Sira. The concluding section is more commonly called the Alphabet of Ben Sira, but I consistently use the form Sirach to lessen confusion for persons not familiar with these texts. Sirach has survived in Greek in the Septuagint. Since 1890, most of Sirach has been recovered in the original Hebrew.

[3] Pseudo-Sirach references obscure Rabbinic knowledge and is written in Rabbinic Hebrew. Orr (2009), Ch. 1, describes differences among manuscripts of Pseudo-Sirach. This work, sometimes called the Alphabet of Ben Sira, can thus be confused with the last section of Sirach. Pseudo-Sirach more clearly identifies the relevant work. Pseudo-Sirach is not a strongly unified work. Different pieces make up different manuscripts. Like Pseudo-Sirach, Solomon and Marcolf also consists of proverb pairs, connecting biographical narrative, and question-answer dialogue. Bradbury (2008) describes connections between the proverbs section, biographical sections, and question-answer sections of Solomon and Marcolf. The structure of Pseudo-Sirach supports those connections.

[4] Possible sources include Jewish and later Islamic stories about the encounters between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and between Solomon and Hiram of Tyre. On the former, 1 Kings 10:1-13, Matthew 12:42, and Lassner (1993). On the later, 1 Kings 5:1-12, Flavius Josephus, Judean Antiquities 8 (5.4).143-144, 146-149. Josephus’s text was translated into Latin in the sixth century. Ziolkowski (2008), pp. 308-9, helpfully provides both texts and an English translation. Pseudo-Sirach declares:

Hiram, King of Tyre was brought by God into paradise because he built the Temple and was at first God-fearing. He remained alive in paradise for a thousand years. Later, however, he became arrogant and said, “I am a god,” as it is said, “Because you have been so haughty and have said, I am a god’ {Ezekiel 28:2} He was then driven out of paradise and he entered hell.

Alphabet of Ben Sira (Pseudo-Sirach), from Hebrew trans. Bronznick (1990) p. 195. Despite his wisdom and good deeds, Solomon fell into idolatry and sexual relations with foreign women. Rabbinic tradition includes debate about whether Solomon was a sinner and should be expelled from Paradise. Nissan (2009) p. 56, n. 31. That tale associates Hiram and Solomon. Ben Sirach thus seems to be a more distinct alternate to Solomon. Pseudo-Sirach’s tale about Joshua’s bull-riding may have derived from an Iranian myth. Nissan (2011). Sixth-century Iranian culture embraced wide-ranging ideas. With the coming of Islam, Persian elites brought cosmopolitan Persian culture into Islamic ruling circles.

[5] Alphabet of Ben Sira (Pseudo-Sirach), from Hebrew trans. Bronznick (1990) pp. 184-5, 187-8 (previous five quotes above). Imruʼ al-Qays’s Muʻallaqah, one of the the most famous pre-Islamic Arabic poems, invokes “a morning draught of fine spiced wine.” About 700 in present-day Iraq, Arabic poet al-Farazdaq implicitly related the aroma of spices to the slaughter of poetry and excrement.

[6] The description of Pseudo-Sirach as “a kind of academic burlesque” is from Bronznick (1990) intro., p. 167. Lassner (1993) p. 19 states:

There is no doubt that the pseudonymous author of this medieval tract {Pseudo-Sirach} intended that Ben Sira and Nebuchadnezzar be seen as analogues to their famous predecessors. {Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, respectively}

Ben Sirach seems to me to have more of the character of Marcolf than of Solomon. See text and note [4] above. Nebuchadnezzar doesn’t seem to be closely related characteristically to the Queen of Sheba, except for being her son in some stories. More generally, ben Sirach and Nebuchadnezzar are less polarized as characters than are Marcolf and Solomon.

[7] The two quotes above are translations of two Hebrew/Aramaic proverb pairs. Some manuscripts of Pseudo-Sirach include 22 Hebrew/Aramaic proverb pairs. The Jewish Encyclopedia entry for the Alphabet of Ben Sira provides Louis Ginzberg’s English translation of the Aramaic proverbs. Orr (2009), Ch. 3, provides an insightful analysis of the pairs and describes them as a parody of petiḥta in aggadic midrashim. The translations of the Hebrew proverbs (le-olam sayings) are from id. pp. 52, 64. The translation of the first Aramaic proverb is from the source reference in id. p. 62, simpler NRSV text. The second is from Ginzberg’s translation, cited in id. p. 52. Id. p. 62 notes a small change in a proverb to create a pun-parody. These also occur in Solomon and Marcolf.

[8] Solomon and Marcolf 1.135ab, 1.81ab, from Latin trans. Ziolkowski (2008) pp. 73, 65 (previous two quotes above). Bradbury & Bradbury (2012) provides online dual-language Latin/English Solomon and Marcolf texts from early printed books. A facsimile of Gerard Leeu’s illustrated English edition, printed at Antwerp in 1492, is also available online.

[9] Alphabet of Ben Sira (Pseudo-Sirach), from Hebrew trans. Bronznick (1990) pp. 172-3 (previous four quotes above).

[10] Solomon and Marcolf 2.12.1-5, from Latin trans. Ziolkowski (2008) p. 89. Within the under-appreciated literature of men’s sexed protests, Alonso Martínez de Toledo’s Archpriest of Talavera spoke out strongly about the dangers of women’s tears. On the judgment of Solomon (splitting the baby), 1 Kings 3:16-28.

[11] Id. 2.12.25-34. In id. 2.12.37, Solomon declares, “you ought not spit upon that which you must put to your mouth.” That may be a reference to a sexual issue in the literature of men’s sexed protests.

[12] Id. 2.14.3-7. The women’s forceful protest has parallels with women’s forceful protest in Judah ibn Shabbetai’s early-thirteenth-century Hebrew narrative Minhat Yehudah Sone ha-Nashim. With respect to ibn Zabara’s Sefer Shaashuim (Book of Delight), written in Hebrew in Spain about 1200, Abrahams (1912) pp. 22, 26 declares:

That the model for Zabara’s visitor was Solomon’s interlocutor, is not open to doubt. … in Zabara’s “Book of Delight” we have a hitherto unsuspected adaptation of the Solomon-Marcolf legend.

Ibn Zabara and his roguish interlocutor engage in proverb battles, ponder the wiles of women, and interrupt each other’s attempts to sleep. Cf. Solomon and Marcolf II.4. Pseudo-Sirach and works like it may have been a common model for both Solomon and Marcolf and Sefer Shaashuim.

[13] Solomon’s criticism of women in Solomon and Marcolf II.16 is “a tissue woven almost exclusively from direct quotations of Ecclesiasticus 25-26 {Sirach}.” Ziolkowski (2008) p. 233. Dense interweaving of biblical quotations in parodic literature also characterizes al-Harizi’s Tahkemoni, written in Hebrew in early thirteenth-century Spain.

[14] Id. 2.17.4, 2.17.13 (previous two quotes above). In the second quote, I’ve substituted “one” for “he.” Cf. Id. 1.5a-b and commentary, pp. 122-3.

Part of the problem is Solomon’s structural dependence on the power of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Medieval Latin conductus describe Mary as “Solomon’s throne.” E.g. the conductus O Mary O happy childbearer {O Maria o felix puerpera} figures Mary as “Solomon’s ivory throne {Salomonis thronus es eburneus}”; and the conductus O Mary, flower of virginal honor {O maria virginei flos honoris} figures Mary as “Solomon’s throne {thronus Salomonis}.” As always, the gynocentric substructure is more important than the sex of the ruler.

[15] Cf. Alexander Pope (1709), An Essay on Criticism Part II, l. 215; Plato, Menexenus 246e, 247a.

[image] King Solomon Hears the Complaint of an Ant who was Blown off the Wall and Got Wounded, illustration from book, Masnavi-i ma’navi of Jalal al-Din Rumi, completed in Bharat, India, 1663. Walters manuscript W.626, folio 156B. Thanks to the Walters Museum for making this cultural artifact of world importance available worldwide on the Internet.

References:

Abrahams, Israel. 1912. The book of delight, and other papers. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America.

Bradbury, Nancy Mason. 2008. “Rival Wisdom in the Latin Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolf.” Speculum. 83 (2): 331-365.

Bradbury, Nancy Mason and Scott Bradbury, eds. 2012. The Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolf: A Dual-Language Edition from Latin and Middle English Printed Editions. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications.

Bronznick, Norman, trans. 1990. “The Alphabet of Ben Sira.” Pp. 167-202 in Stern, David and Mark Mirsky, eds. 1990. Rabbinic fantasies: imaginative narratives from classical Hebrew literature. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.

Lassner, Jacob. 1993. Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: boundaries of gender and culture in postbiblical Judaism and medieval Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Nissan, Ephraim. 2009. “On Nebuchadnezzar in Pseudo-Sirach.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha. 19 (1): 45-76.

Nissan, Ephraim. 2011. “On Joshua in Pseudo-Sirach.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha. 20 (3): 163-218.

Orr, Gili. 2009. The medieval Alpha Beta deBen Sira I (“Rishona”): A parody on Rabbinic literature or a Midrashic commentary on ancient proverbs? Thesis, Master Hebrew Language and Culture. University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Ziolkowski, Jan M. 2008. Solomon and Marcolf. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University.