Muhammad Ghaffari: The Persian Painter of Modern Life

In the late nineteenth century, Qajar Iran, like its neighbor the Ottoman Empire, faced the dual challenges of colonialism and modernity. This paper considers the role of art education and art production in its response to these forces, focusing on the leading court painter of the late Qajar period, Mirza Muhammad Ghaffari, Kamal al-Mulk (1848–1941), whose career bridged the late Qajar period and the early twentieth century. Early in his career, Ghaffari was recognized as the leading exponent of academic painting, yet by the constitutional period his art had evolved into a style representing contemporary Persian life, a style which was informed by nationalistic discourses current in intellectual and political circles. This paper's consideration of the evolution of his style from a European modernism to an authentic Iranian modernism includes Ghaffari's training as a painter, the role of photography in the development of his style, his travel to Europe, and parallels with the art and career of the Ottoman painter Osman Hamdi.     

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.