The Persian Presence in Nineteenth-Century English Poetry: A Taxonomy

This study employs keyword searches of literary databases such as Literature Online (LION) in an attempt to map the image of “Persia” in nineteenth-century English poetry as it was molded by a proliferation of thoughts and ideas in a variety of contexts. Completeness is not possible, of course, but the article aims to identify and explore some of the major categories within which the image of Persia was formed and disseminated in the nineteenth-century. The scope of the study is not confined to a corpus of poetic works that were written specifically on or about “Persia,” but takes account of a broader range of poems, and attends to the structure, texture and variations of the presence of “Persia” in nineteenth-century English poetry.     

The Village in Contemporary Persian Poetry

This paper explores the ever-shifting symbiosis between the village motif, social justice and populist politics in Iran over the past three decades. The village has remained a recurring motif in Persian literature, employed by a variety of writers and state institutions for a range of means. As a symbol, it has been a conduit into which any ideology can be poured; the village allegory can be manipulated to both condemn and support the official policies of the state. A comparison of Iran’s pre- and post-revolutionary literature sheds light on the ways the state literati perpetuated an idealized picture of the village as an authentic, sacred space, increasingly associated with religious nationalism during the 1980s. The paper examines the key socio-political influences on the evolution of the pastoral motif, the work of state-sponsored official poets, and the impact of the village on the cultural doctrine of the Islamic Republic.     

Rethinking the Ottoman Imitation of Persian Poetry

This article revisits the common discourse that Ottoman poetry is a derivative imitation of Persian poetry. I begin by surveying and discussing the discourse of imitation that has pervaded approaches to Ottoman poetry in particular and Ottoman literature in general. Then I turn to explore how Ottoman poets engaged with Persian poetry by focusing on a lyric poem composed by the Ottoman sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (1494?1566) in imitation of the Persian master poet Hafiz of Shiraz (ca. 1315?90). In light of intertextual analysis, I illustrate and discuss the intricate ways in which Süleyman models himself on Hafiz in crafting his poem. I conclude with the idea that a closer analytical look at Ottoman poets’ intertextual dialogue with Persian poetry can offer better insights into the Ottoman reception of Persian poetic models as well as into the meaning and workings of imitation in the Ottoman literary context.     

Kiarostami and the Aesthetics of Modern Persian Poetry

Abbas Kiarostami's filmmaking draws on the aesthetics of modern Persian poetry, especially the poetry of Forough Farrokhzad and Sohrab Sepehri. In his films, Kiarostami, impacted by Sepehri and Farrokhzad's “de-politicized” poetry, “de-experiences” our perception of reality. Kiarostami aestheticizes everyday life by employing non-manipulative film stylistics. In films such as Through the Olive Trees and Where Is the Friend's House? he uses a minimalist approach by employing amateur actors and children, depth of field, and minimal camera work to enhance Sepehri's philosophy of novel outlook. Through a masterful intermingling of poetic discourse with his film sensibilities, Kiarostami has achieved a profoundly humanist approach to cinema. Kiarostami mixes the two genres of documentary and fiction to remind the audience of the artificiality of constructing a factual point. To attain this goal, he sometimes uses an ironical and witty cinematic language that is harshly self-critical and self-reflexive. Kiarostami is a poet/philosopher who “writes” his poetic films with camera.     

Orality in Persian Argumentative Discourse: A Case Study of Editorials

Languages have their own distinctive styles of argumentation. It seems some languages like Arabic and Persian have a preference for using the “oral” features of parataxis, formulaicity and repetition as persuasive devices in argumentation. The purpose of this article is first to examine these “oral” characteristics in Persian argumentation, and then to tie together the two areas of research: the study of orality and the study of metadiscourse. The article claims that these oral characteristics in Persian are means of gaining rhetorical effectiveness. Therefore, they should be considered as metadiscourse devices used to create a bond between writer and reader.     

Final /n/ Deletion in Ghayeni Persian: Opacity in Harmonic Serialism and Parallel Optimality Theory

This paper explores the application and non-application of final /n/ deletion in Ghayeni Persian. In this dialect, final /n/ deletion is a productive phonological process whose application in different domains and environments is affected by several opaque counterbleeding and counterfeeding interactions as well as bleeding. This research presents new empirical data about these aspects which could be of general theoretical interest. It is also an attempt to make a contribution to current debate in phonological opacity. In so doing, it adopts Harmonic Serialism (HS) to accommodate counterbleeding opacity. It offers an analysis to survive a pitfall challenging HS in handling counterbleeding opacity in derived words. With regard to counterfeeding opacity, it adopts Parallel Optimality Theory (POT) using Local Constraint Conjunction (LCC). It discusses how POT and HS in particular could treat opaque interactions in Ghayeni dialect. In addition, this paper argues that a candidate which undergoes the same process twice in the same step could also be included in HS’s gradualness condition.     

Razi on Reason and Political Authority: A Study in Medieval Persian Political Thought

The Philosopher of Rey, Mohammad-e Zakariya-ye Razi and his Ismaili adversaries, Abu Hatam-e Razi and Naser-e Khosrow, share a political understanding of religion according to which religion is a theologico-political system of domination. However, they are at odds over the political philosophy appraisal of religion qua a system of authority. The paper explicates the latter disagreement in part based on Razi's and his opponents' conflicting ideas about the nature of the faculty of Reason and its distribution among men. Consequently, the paper underlines a democratic implication of Razi's thesis on the makeup of the human intellect.