Language between God and the Poets

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In the Arabic eleventh-century, scholars were intensely preoccupied with the

way that language generated truth and beauty. Their work in poetics, logic,

theology, and lexicography defined the intellectual space between God and the

poets. In _Language Between God and the Poets_ , Alexander Key argues that ar-

Raghib al-Isfahani, Ibn Furak, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Abd al-Qahir al-

Jurjani shared a conceptual vocabulary based around the words ___ma'na_ and

_haqiqah_. They used this vocabulary to build theories of language, mind, and

reality that answered perennial questions: how to structure language and

reference, how to describe God, how to construct logical arguments, and how to

explain poetic affect.