Law, Morality, and Subversion in Sumerian Prose Miniatures

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_chapter_19403
dc.contributor.author	Matuszak Jana
dc.title	Law, Morality, and Subversion in Sumerian Prose Miniatures
dc.type	Chapter
dc.language.iso	en
dc.description.abstract	This paper investigates the legal framework and transmission history of two Sumerian prose miniatures from the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000‑1600 BCE), which were hitherto considered as folktales and whose relation to wisdom literature remained controversial. It will be argued that their affinity with academic legal discourse and moralising wisdom compositions, as well as their firm embeddedness in scribal milieux, suggests that they are better understood as satirical morality tales bridging literary genres at the intersection of law and morality. Since both stories respond to incidental or conceptual ‘gaps’ in royal law collections, special attention will be devoted to analysing their subversive potential.
dc.relation.ispartof	Antiquity Studies
dc.relation.ispartof	Studi orientali
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Venice University Press, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.issued	2023-11-30
dc.dateAccepted	2024-03-04
dc.dateSubmitted	2023-11-07
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-776-0/law-morality-and-subversion-in-sumerian-prose-mini/
dc.identifier.issn	2610-8828
dc.identifier.eissn	2610-9344
dc.identifier.isbn	978-88-6969-777-7
dc.identifier.eisbn	978-88-6969-776-0
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
item.fulltext	with fulltext
item.grantfulltext	open
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Folktale
dc.subject	Law
dc.subject	Morality tale
dc.subject	Parody
dc.subject	Royal legislation
dc.subject	Satire
dc.subject	Scholarly text compilation
dc.subject	Scribal education
dc.subject	Sumerian
dc.subject	Wisdom literature

Chapter
open access peer reviewed

Law, Morality, and Subversion in Sumerian Prose Miniatures

Jana Matuszak The University of Chicago, USA

abstract

This paper investigates the legal framework and transmission history of two Sumerian prose miniatures from the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000‑1600 BCE), which were hitherto considered as folktales and whose relation to wisdom literature remained controversial. It will be argued that their affinity with academic legal discourse and moralising wisdom compositions, as well as their firm embeddedness in scribal milieux, suggests that they are better understood as satirical morality tales bridging literary genres at the intersection of law and morality. Since both stories respond to incidental or conceptual ‘gaps’ in royal law collections, special attention will be devoted to analysing their subversive potential.

Published

Nov. 30, 2023

Accepted

March 4, 2024

Submitted

Nov. 7, 2023

Language

ISBN (PRINT)

978-88-6969-777-7

ISBN (EBOOK)

978-88-6969-776-0

Keywords: Folktale • Parody • Scholarly text compilation • Sumerian • Law • Morality tale • Scribal education • Wisdom literature • Satire • Royal legislation

Copyright: © 2023 Jana Matuszak. 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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