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Standardizing Emotions: Aspects of Classification and Arrangement in Tales With a Good Ending

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Abstract

This article links classifying activities to practices of emotion. Re-reading al-Tanūkhī’s collection al-Faraj baʿd al-shidda (“Deliverance after hardship”), it focuses on the arrangement of the book on the one hand, and on how the involved emotions are handled on the other. This double approach suggests that by connecting the fields “order” and “emotion” the scope of knowledge with regard to the Arabic scholarly tradition can be reviewed and extended. Against the background of the widespread impulse to arrange and classify, the emotional spectrum is given a framework which generalizes, even rationalizes, the feeling itself. In turn, emotional representations in the stories shed light onto the fragile mechanisms of encyclopedic presuppositions and on definitions in general. Since both concepts are affected and shaped by narrative structures, story-telling can be considered as a significant means of structuring the world.

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Published Online: 2017-11-21
Published in Print: 2017-12-20

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