Seyed-Ghorab, Ali-Asghar (ed.). 2018. The layered heart: Essays on Persian poetry, a celebration in honor of Dick Davis. Washington, D.C: Mage Publishers.The Layered Heart : Essays on Persian Poetry is published in celebration of the poet and scholar Dick Davis, dubbed “our pre-eminent translator from Persian” by The Washington Post. Edited by Ali-Asghar Seyed-Ghorab, Associate Professor of Persian at Leiden University, the volume includes twenty-one essays about Persian culture and literature, ranging from classical Persian poetry to modern literary topics. Written by foremost scholars in the field, each of the essays is original and ground-breaking either in content or in methodology, while together they encompass a broad sweep of Iranian history, from pre-Islamic times to the present. They offer a fascinating, multi-faceted view of the Persian classics – from poetry in praise of wine, and the portrayal of love in Persian-European medieval romances, to an examination of Ferdowsi’s monumental epic, the Shahnameh, its connection with the Persian oral tradition and its later reception in Iran, Afghanistan, India, and Europe. Modern topics include an analysis of Lahuti’s letter poem to Joseph Stalin, published for the first time in Persian and English, the celebrated novel My Uncle Napoleon, and trends in poetry before and after the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
Table of Contents
- Ehsan Yarshater: “Voyages in Literature”
- Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak: “Continuity and Creativity: Models of Change in Persian Poetry, Classical and Modern”
- Saeed Honarmand: “Between the Water and the Wall: The Power of Love in Medieval Persian Romance”
- Christine van Ruymbeke: “Wretched King Mobad Loses the War of Love”
- Asghar Seyed-Ghorab: “Of Love and Loyalty: The Middle English Floris and Blancheflour and the Persian Warqa and Golshāh”
- Kamran Talattof: “What Kind of Wine Did Rudaki Desire? Samanids’ Search for Cultural and National Identity”
- Paul Losensky: “Song of the Cupbearer by Mohammad Sūfī Māzandarānī”
- Saghi Gazerani: “Zahhak’s Story and History”
- H.E. Chehabi: “Wrestling in the Shahnameh and Later Persian Epics”
- Sunil Sharma: “Heroes, Husbands, and Rhino Hunters: Sekandar and Bahram Gur in the Shahnameh”
- Abbas Amanat: “Shahnameh-ye Naderi and the Revival of Epic Poetry in Post-Safavid Iran”
- Reza Shaghaghi Zarghamee: “From Scythia to Sistan: Reconciling the Shahnameh and Herodotus to Discover the Origins of the Rostam Legend”
- Olga M. Davidson: “On the Sources of the Shahnameh”
- Franklin Lewis: “Shifting Allegiances: Primordial Relationships and How They Change in the Shahnameh”
- Charles Melville: “The Shahnameh in India: Tārīkh-i Dilgushā-yi Shamshīr Khānī”
- Margaret A. Mills: “Kok Kohzad in Afghanistan: Local Knowledge and Shahnameh Characters”
- Firuza Melville: “Side-Saddle Tazmin, or, the Post-Shahnameh for Victorian Children”
- Natalia Chalisova: “Poet and Ruler: The Case of Dāstān-e gol, Lahuti’s Poem for Stalin”
- Fatemeh Shams: “From Revolution to Silence: The Political and Literary Life of Qaysar Aminpur”
- Saeedeh Shahnahpur: “Literature Beyond Borders: Modern Persian Novels in English Translation, The Case of Pezeshkzād’s My Uncle Napoleon”
- John Walbridge: “Astrolabe Hunting in the Punjab”