Skip Navigation


Literary Imagination Advance Access originally published online on October 17, 2007
Literary Imagination 2008 10(2):127-141; doi:10.1093/litimag/imm112
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
10/2/127    most recent
imm112v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Justman, S.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. All rights reserved. For permissions please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The Secularism of Fiction: A Medieval Source

Stewart Justman*

*Director, Liberal Studies Program, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812, USA.

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.


   1. The Three Rings
 
A beautiful story in Boccaccio's Decameron tells of a wise Jew evading a trap laid for him by the famous Sultan of Egypt and conqueror of Jerusalem, Saladin.

Short of funds as a result of his own generosity, Saladin summons the money-lender Melchizedek in an attempt to outwit him of his wealth by setting him a riddle: which of the three laws, Jewish, "Saracen," or Christian, is the true one. No matter which of the three Melchizedek should choose, Saladin will be able to refute him and, as a penalty, impound his fortune. Melchizedek knows Saladin's game, however, and so, like one who answers a question with a question, he replies with a story that explains why the Sultan's riddle is unanswerable.

It seems that once there was a great man who possessed a most beautiful ring that he bequeathed to one of his sons, who in turn left it . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   *
 

   2. Holy War and Cultural Traffic
 

   3. Fiction and Enmity
 

   4. Fables: Simplicity, Subtlety, Power
 

Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?