Tag: Persian

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The Six Corners of the World

Casari, Mario. 2023. Šeš taraf-e donyā «Les six côtés du monde»: Anthropologie de la narration dans la littérature persane classique (Cahier de Studia Iranica 65). Leuven: Peeters.

This volume contains the text of the five Ehsan and Latifeh Yarshater Distinguished Lectures on Iranian Studies, organized by the Unité Mixte de Recherche 7528 “Mondes iranien et indien”, and delivered in 2018 at the Collègue de France in Paris.

It presents a reflection on the nature of narration in classical Persian literature, its role as a central cultural reference system, and the connection that narrative production may maintain with the different fields of knowledge that govern the human experience of the world. Taking a tale of the Alexander legend as a case study, the volume is structured in five chapters, with five main themes: first, the main tools and values of Persian narration; the link of story-telling with Persian moral reflection; the absorption of scientific notions into the fabric of tales; their gradual assumption of symbolic and mystical values; and finally the circulation of tales in popular literary domains alongside various forms of folk knowledge.

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Mystical Landscapes

Keshavarz, Fatemeh & Ahmet T. Karamustafa (eds.). 2024. Mystical landscapes in medieval Persian literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

In this collection, Fatemeh Keshavarz and Ahmet T. Karamustafa bring together leading researchers from comparative literature, history, literary criticism and religious studies to explore the major authors and genres of medieval Persian mystical literature. Breaking out of the all-inclusive literary history framework, the contributors write on topics that have energised their scholarship over time and address areas where the literary and the mystical have mingled and led to paradigmatic creations. How can you interpret the climactic conclusion to the framing narrative of The Speech of the Birds of ‘Attar of Nishapur? How did ‘Aziz Nasafi understand the concept of religion? What do Rumi’s conversations with the Divine tell us about his teachings and his poetry? How do medieval Persian Sufi commentators add to our understanding the Qur’an? How can we utilise Sufi manuals, life stories and utterances? All of these explorations and more bring the depth and eloquence of Persian mystical literature to life in this volume.

Editor note: This books falls outside our known comfort zone, but not by such a wide margin that we can ignore it. ~AZ

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The Art of Teaching Persian Literature

Lewis, Franklin,Asghar Seyed-Gohrab & Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi (eds.). 2024. The Art of Teaching Persian Literature: From Theory to Practice. Leiden: Brill.

This unique book is the first publication on the art of teaching Persian literature in English, consisting of 18 chapters by prominent early-career, mid-career and established scholars, who generously share their experiences and methodologies in teaching both classical and modern Persian literature across various academic traditions in the world. The volume is divided into three parts: the background to teaching Persian literature: pedagogy, translation and canon, and thematic and topical approaches to the Persian literature class. It includes such topics as the history of teaching Persian literature, the traditional teaching of Persian literature, the political and ideological intentions revealed in the formation of the Persian literature curriculum, the necessity to include marginalized modern Persian literature, such as women’s or diaspora literature, and more applied approaches to curriculum development and teaching.

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Ancient, classical & late classical Persian literature

Talattof, Kamran (ed.). 2023. Routledge handbook of ancient, classical and late classical Persian literature. London: Routledge.

The Routledge Handbook of Ancient, Classical, and Late Classical Persian Literature contains scholarly essays and sample texts related to Persian literature from 650 BCE through the 16th century CE. It includes analyses of some seminal ancient texts and the works of numerous authors of the classical period.

The chapters apply a disciplinary or interdisciplinary approach to the many movements, genres, and works of the long and evolving body of Persian literature produced in the Persianate World. These collections of scholarly essays and samples of Persian literary texts provide facts (general information), instructions (ways to understand, analyze, and appreciate this body of works), and the field’s state-of-the-art research (the problematics of the topics) regarding one of the most important and oldest literary traditions in the world.

Thus, the Handbook’s chapters and related texts provide scholars, students, and admirers of Persian poetry and prose with practical and direct access to the intricacies of the Persian literary world through a chronological account of key moments in the formation of this enduring literary tradition.

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Persian Computational Linguistics and NLP

Marszałek-Kowalewska, Katarzyna (ed.). 2023. Persian Computational Linguistics and NLP. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.

This companion provides an overview of current work in the areas of Persian Computational Linguistics (CL) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). It covers a great number of topics and describes most innovative works of distinct academics researching the Persian language. The target group are researchers from computer science, linguistics, translation, psychology, philosophy, and mathematics who are interested in this topic.

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Learn Persian

Alam, Mahmood. 2023. Learn Persian: Grammar and Workbook for Elementary and Intermediate Levels. London: Routledge.

Learn Persian has a step-by-step organized and structured framework of modern Persian words; grammar, short syntactical phrases and idiomatic expressions. Persian has a lot of common words and sounds from Arabic and Urdu; this work highlights vowels and consonants that are covered in the formation of words and sounds with apt precision. The special feature of this book is its simplicity, yet meaningful and comprehensiveness for the study of the language. This should be a good source book for new learners, as well as for those who want to explore the harmony and flair of Persian.

It would undoubtedly open doors to a Persian heritage as much as it slowly trains the eager learner in spoken Persian as well. Learn Persian will interest both learners and experts, and an excellent experience of coming across Persian as an interesting living language.

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An Unknown Illuminated Judeo-Persian Manuscript of Nizāmī’s Khosrow and Shīrīn

Khosrow Discovers Shīrīn Bathing, From Pictorial Cycle of Eight Poetic Subjects, mid 18th century. Brooklyn Museum.

Carmeli, Orit. 2021. An Unknown Illuminated Judeo-Persian Manuscript of Nizāmī’s Khosrow and Shīrīn. Ars Judaica. The Bar Ilan Journal of Jewish Art 17(1). 131–140.

This is a brief presentation of the mid-seventeenth-century illuminated Judeo-Persian copy of Nizāmī’s Khosrow and Shīrīn from the collection of the Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem. The Khamsa of Nizāmī Ganjavi (d. 1209) is one of the most famous medieval Persian love stories and one of the most admired poetical works ever written in the Persian language. Khosrow and Shīrīn (composed 1175/6-1191) is the second book in the Quinary and recounts the tragic love story of the Sasanian king Khosrow II Parviz and the Armenian princess Shīrīn. Nizāmī’s poetry, in addition to other works of Persian classical masters, was regarded by the Jews of Iran as an integral part of their literary and cultural heritage. Over the years these renowned poetical works were largely transliterated into Judeo-Persian and copies of the texts can be found in various public and private collections. The manuscript in question and other illuminated Judeo-Persian manuscripts clearly testify to their owners and patrons’ awareness of long-established Persian artistic tradition and cultural conventions, representing Jewish-Persian encounter in text and image.

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Persian Prose

Utas, Bo (ed.). 2021. Persian prose (A history of Persian literature V). London: I.B. Tauris.

Volume V of A History of Persian Literature presents a broad survey of Persian prose: from biographical, historiographical, and didactic prose, to scientific manuals and works of popular prose fiction. It analyzes the rhetorical devices employed by writers in different periods in their philosophical and political discourse; or when their aim is primarily to entertain rather than to instruct , the chapters describe different techniques used to transform old stories and familiar tales into novel versions to entice their audience.

Many of the texts in prose cited in the volume share a wealth of common lore and literary allusions with Persian poetry. Prose and poetry frequently appear on the same page in tandem. In different ways, therefore, this creative interplay demonstrates the perennial significance of intertextuality, from the earliest times to the present; and help us in the process to further our understanding and enhance our enjoyment of Persian literature in its different manifestations throughout history.

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Studies in Persian Language and Literature in Honour of Paola Orsatti

Maggi, Mauro, and Mohsen Ashtiany, eds. A turquoise coronet: Studies in Persian language and literature in honour of Paola Orsatti. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2021.

Paola Orsatti is currently professor at La Sapienza University in Rome. In the course of a long and distinguished academic career combined with an impressive record of dedicated teaching, she has made significant contributions to the study of classical Persian poetry, its connections with pre-Islamic traditions, the history of the Persian language, and Islamic manuscripts. Along with a profile of the dedicatee and a comprehensive bibliography of her publications up to 2019, the volume contains eighteen papers by her colleagues, friends, and former students to celebrate her 65th birthday. The papers mirror her diverse research interests. They deal with a variety of themes relating to Persian literature from Middle Persian texts to twentieth-century poetry—approached philologically, historically, and critically—as well as to the history of Middle and New Persian and the dialects of Iran, and include significant Persian literary texts translated and edited for the first time in this volume.

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The Judeo-Persian rendition of the Buddha biographies

Yasharpour, Dalia. 2021. The Prince and the Sufi: the Judeo-Persian rendition of the Buddha biographies (The Brill Reference Library of Judaism 62). Leiden: Brill.

The Prince and the Sufi is the literary composition of the seventeenth-century Judeo-Persian poet Elisha ben Shmūel. In The Prince and the Sufi: The Judeo-Persian Rendition of the Buddha Biographies, Dalia Yasharpour provides a thorough analysis of this popular work to show how the Buddha’s life story has undergone substantial transformation with the use of Jewish, Judeo-Persian and Persian-Islamic sources. The annotated edition of the text and the corresponding English translation are meticulous and insightful. This scholarly study makes available to readers an important branch in the genealogical tree of the Buddha Biographies.