Founded in 1956, Penn State University Press publishes rigorously reviewed, high-quality works of scholarship and books of regional and contemporary interest, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences. The publishing arm of the Pennsylvania State University and a division of the Penn State University Libraries, the Press promotes the advance of scholarship by disseminating knowledge—new information, interpretations, methods of analysis—widely in books, journals, and digital publications.
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The First Modern English Translation of Robert le Diable, an Anonymous French Romance of the Thirteenth Century
English translation of an anonymous thirteenth-century French poem in which a woman desperate to bear a child appeals to the devil for help. Originally written in octosyllabic rhymed couplets, this translation uses free verse.
By means of a threefold approach—typological analysis of literary forms, investigation of religious ideology, and study of didactic aims and methods—Weinfeld shows that the deuteronomic composition was the creation of scribal circles who began their work some time prior to the reign of Josiah and were still at work after the fall of ......
Explores the role of writer Gwendolyn Bennett as an important contributor to the Harlem Renaissance. Includes Bennett’s published and unpublished poetry, fiction, essays, diaries, letters, and artwork.
Speech Act Theory, Dual Authorship, and Theological Interpretation
Christian readers of the Hebrew Bible are often faced with a troubling tension. On the one hand, they are convinced that this ancient text is relevant today, yet on the other, they remain perplexed at how this can be so, particularly when parts of it appear to condone violence. Barker’s volume seeks to address this tension in two parts: ......
The period of the demise of the kingdom of Judah at the end of the 6th century B.C.E., the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, the exile of the elite to Babylon, and the reshaping of the territory of the new province of Judah, culminating at the end of the century with the first return of exiles—all have been subjects of intense ......
Presents the story of the Chanka people of Peru, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, told through a narrative of the crimes committed by a priest, Juan Bautista de Albadán, in the early 1600s.
Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms
This pioneering work that first appeared in 1972 in German was the first to compare the conceptual world of a biblical book with ancient Near Eastern iconography. Eisenbrauns’ English edition of Keel’s classic work provides the 21st century schoÆ’lar with his groundbreaking methodology. Generously illustrated with ......
The Creation of Humankind in Genesis 2:5-3:24 in Light of the mis pi, pit pi, and wpt-r Rituals of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt
Catherine McDowell presents a detailed and insightful analysis of the creation of adam in Gen 2:5–3:24 in light of the Mesopotamian mīs pî pīt pî (“washing of the mouth, opening of the mouth”) and the Egyptian wpt-r (opening of the mouth) rituals for the creation of a divine image. ......
Although listening is central to human interaction, its importance is often ignored. In the rush to speak and be heard, it is easy to neglect listening and disregard its significance as a way of being with others and the world. Drawing upon insights from phenomenology, linguistics, philosophy of communication, and ethics, Listening, ......
