Her latest book, “The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture,” extends these themes through a rich investigation of cross-cultural interactions in language, literature, architecture, and the decorative arts. Her other books include “Writing in Dante's Cult of Truth: From Borges to Boccaccio,” and “The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage.” She is the co-editor (with Raymond Scheindlin and Michael Sells) of “The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Al-Andalus,” a volume that places the Arabic literature of Islamic Spain in the context of the other languages and cultures of the Iberian peninsula. This acclaimed work embraces authors from Ibn ‘Arabi to Judah Halevi, from Dante to Eric Clapton. Menocal once noted that she was inspired to write the book because “… the medieval period has been, and continues to be, so grossly misrepresented in almost all of our histories - from the fact that we have so little knowledge that medieval European culture included, centrally, the study of Greek philosophy as it was interpreted by hundreds of years of Muslim and Jewish commentaries to the fact that we still use the word medieval to mean 'dark' and 'unenlightened' when, in some respects, Europe has never been as enlightened … as it was then.” Read the paper, a precursor to “The Ornament of the World,” that Menocal presented at a Yale Law School seminar in 2000.Īmong her other books is “Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric,” which finds in the idea of exile the origin of the lyric and the foundation of the genre of the love song. A documentary for public television based on the book is under development. It has been published in numerous languages, and received wide critical acclaim. The book placed the interactions of Jews, Christians and Muslims at the heart of the formation of a diverse and vibrant Western culture, and posed a vigorous challenge to the notion of inevitable polarization of Islam and the West in the popular imagination. Her 2002 book, “The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain,” describes the rich cross-fertilization that took place among those religious groups. Menocal, Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale and former director of the Whitney Humanities Center, focused her research on the literary traditions of the Middle Ages and on the interaction of various religious and cultural groups in medieval Spain. 15 after a three-year battle with melanoma. The majority of violent deaths, not only in Guatemala but in other Central American nations, are related to drug trafficking activities, Menocal said.įour of every ten murders reported are linked to drug trafficking, and half of them are executions due to settling of scores or business among drug dealers, Menocal said.María Rosa Menocal, a renowned scholar and historian of medieval culture and literature, passed away on Oct. However, neither Colom nor Menocal mentioned a report from the National Institute of Forensic Sciences asserting an increase in average daily crimes in the first three weeks of October.ĭuring that three-week period, 302 men and 36 women were killed by firearms or other weapons, raising the rate from 14 to 17, based on the number of autopsies performed by the institute. This was the result of crime prevention policies, operative plans, and dismantling of gangs, he said. Menocal said the figures were encouraging, and that data from his ministry showed an average of 16 crimes reported daily in Guatemala, contrasting with 18 per day in 2009 and the 20 per day in 2006. President Alvaro Colom affirms that violent deaths in Guatemala have decreased, but recent autopsy figures point to an increase in the crime rate.Ĭolom and his Interior Minister Carlos Menocal said that from January to September of this year, 430 less people were violently murdered than in the same period in 2009.
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