Series | Medieval and Modern Philologies
Edited book | Authors as Readers in the Mamlūk Period and Beyond
Chapter | Introduction
Introduction
Abstract
Authors do read as well, and they are special readers. They are creators: litterateurs are artists whose medium is language. The scholarly production also has a hint of creativity: the only fact to produce a new text about a certain subject is an act of creation. The way we treat a particular topic, the moment we decide to treat it, the perspective we adopt, the links we tie with other realities, data or ideas... all these circumstances contain a varying degree of creativity. Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed: we only reshuffle material seen, heard, read, or lived elsewhere. Thus, authors’ libraries are extremely informative: the books owned by a certain author tell a lot of his/her tastes and subjects of predilection, but also of his/her past, present and future (possible) works.
Published March 8, 2022 | Language: en
Copyright © 2022 Élise Franssen. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
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