The Research Repository

Armenian scholarship open to all

A digital library of verified, open scholarship on all things Armenian, including Armenian history, the Genocide, Artsakh, language, and the diaspora.

A new one every 3 days

The full repository

Topic:Yovhannes Sarkawag
Showing 1 of 1 matching publications (200 total) · catalogue updated 2026-07-22
Journal ArticlePaywalled

Armenological Paradigms and Yovhannēs Sarkawag's Discourse on Wisdom: Philosophical Understanding of an Armenian Renaissance?

Cowe, S. Peter, 1995
Revue des Études Arméniennes, Vol. 25 (1994-1995), pp. 125–155 (Peeters); DOI 10.2143/REA.25.0.2003778

A contribution to the debate over applying Western or Eurocentric categories to Near Eastern history, re-examining whether the concept of 'renaissance' can properly be applied to Armenia in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries, with particular focus on the role assigned to Yovhannes Sarkawag's celebrated poem in that development. Cowe engages Edward Said's critique of orientalist presuppositions, noting that Said's paradigm, built around the representation of Arabs and Islam, is not fully transferable to Christian cultures of the region. He observes that the Christian faith of Armenians and Greeks made their relationship to Westerners more ambiguous: employed as commercial and diplomatic intermediaries, yet sometimes held in greater opprobrium than Muslims because they were deemed heretics and schismatics.

Armenian intellectual historyYovhannes SarkawagperiodizationOrientalism debatemedieval Armenian philosophy
EnglishRead Armenological Paradigms and Yovhannēs Sarkawag's Discourse on Wisdom: Philosophical Understanding of an Armenian Renaissance? (opens in a new tab)

Know published research that belongs here, or have scholarly work of your own? Suggest it and we'll review it for the repository.

Suggest a publication →

How this repository is built

What is in this repository?

Peer-reviewed and institutional scholarship on Armenian subjects — history, the Armenian Genocide, Artsakh, language and literature, the church, and the diaspora — in any language and from any country. Journal articles, books, book chapters, theses and institute publications are all in scope. Entries are chosen for what they contribute to an Armenian student's understanding, not for how recent or how famous they are.

What does 'verified' mean here?

It means a person opened the link and checked the record against the publisher's own page: the title, the authors, the venue, the volume and pages, and the identifier. The date of that check is shown on each entry's page. Where an entry has no date shown, no check has been logged for it yet, and the catalogue does not claim one.

What is the summary on each entry?

A short account of what the publication does, followed by notes on what it offers different readers — a student writing a term paper, an academic, someone reading for the community, someone new to the subject. They are meant to tell you what a piece is useful for, not only what it argues.

How do I suggest a publication, or report an error?

Use the 'Suggest a publication' link at the foot of the directory. The same address takes corrections — a broken link, a wrong page range, a misattributed author. Corrections are checked against the publisher's record before an entry changes.