Love at a Crux: The New Persian Romance in a Global Middle Ages

by Cameron Cross

Overview

Love at a Crux presents the emergence of versified love stories in the New Persian language as a crucial event in the history of romance. Using the tale of Vis & Rāmin (w. 1054) as its focal point, the book explores how Persian court poets in the eleventh century reconfigured "myths" and "fables" from the distant past in ways that transformed the love story from a form of evening entertainment to a method of ethical, political, and affective self-inquiry. This transformation both anticipates and helps to explain the efflorescence of romance in many medieval cultures across the western flank of Afro-Eurasia.

Bringing together traditions that are often sundered by modern disciplinary boundaries, Love at a Crux unearths the interconnections between New Persian and comparable traditions in ancient and medieval Greek, Arabic, Georgian, Old French, and Middle High German, offering scholars in classics, medieval studies, Middle Eastern literatures, and premodern world literature a case study in literary history as connected history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487547271
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	12/14/2023
Pages:	390
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Cameron Cross is an assistant professor of Iranian studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Table of Contents

Reader's Notes
Prologue: In Which Love Has Many a Tale
A Heterogeneous Text
Re-congnizing Romance
The Medieval Globe
Mythos and Ethos
Love at a Crux

1. Phantasy: The Rise of Romance

An Act of Creation
Legends and Legerdemain
Heroic Lives and Amorous Tales
By Way of Symbol
Why Read Romance?
Like Kingly Pearls

2. Ethics: An Affair of Conscience

The Ethos of Romantic Love
Conflicting Signals and False Starts
Vis Unveiled
From Media to Marv: A Tale of Three Seductions
A New Covenant

3. Authority: The Prisoner of His Skin

"All Kings Were His Slaves"
Beholding Mehr
The Sacred Bond
The Iron Band
Un/knowing the Truth
Smashing the Mirror
"The World is a Dream"

4. Affect: The Limits of Lyric

Lyrics, Episodes, and Adventure-Time
Episode 1 Mode-Switching
Episode 2 Lyrical Reality
Episode 3The Mirror of the Self
Episode 4 A Crisis of Authority
Breakdown and Breakup
The Final Word

5. History: The Death of Romantic Love

Transcribing the Soul
Love-Death (Liebestod)
False Death (Scheintod)
Endings and Beginnings

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Appendices

Appendix A: A Summary of Vis & Rāmin

Exordium
From Media to Marv
A King's Collapse
Vis and Rāmin Separate
Death and Deliverance

Appendix B: Rāmin's Songs

Rāmin Falls in Love
Rāmin Woos Vis
Episode 1: The Ordeal
Episode 2: The Bed-Trick
Episode 3: The Devil's Grotto
Episode 4: The Garden
The Breakup
The Coup

Appendix C: Concordance

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Dick Davis

"Love at a Crux places the eleventh-century Persian verse narrative Vis & Rāmin firmly within the context of transnational romance and also makes a brilliantly argued case for its paramount importance as Persian literature's primary major instance of the genre. This is a well-argued and very rewarding book that should be read by all scholars of both the romance genre and medieval Persian literature."

Panagiotis Agapitos

"This is an excellent book that addresses not only specialists in Persian literature but also medievalists, Byzantinists, as well as comparatists. Cross has taken a fresh approach to Vis & Rāmin , that is both ingenious and compelling, as it attempts to make sense of the medieval narrative's disjointedness. Vis & Rāmin has been removed from a conventional — vertical and national — history of Persian literature and has been placed horizontally into the broader world of ancient and medieval romance."

Suzanne Conklin Akbari

"At once a focused study of a single literary work — the eleventh-century Persian romance Vis & Rāmin — and an expansive account of literary history seen from a specific vantage point, Cameron Cross's work invites us to rethink our understanding of the 'Global Middle Ages.' His analysis of Abrahamic and Hellenic traditions allows us to see how confessional identities and neoplatonic philosophical commitments were mediated through the genre of romance at the vibrant cultural crossroads that was medieval Persia."

Julia Rubanovich

"Highly original, theoretically alert, and brilliantly written, Love at a Crux provides penetrating insights into one of the most captivating works of classical Persian literature. With great mastery, Cross explores Vis & Rāmin within broader and interconnected literary, theological, and philosophical developments in the Late Antique, medieval Islamicate, and European worlds."

Editorial Reviews

"This is an excellent book that addresses not only specialists in Persian literature but also medievalists, Byzantinists, as well as comparatists. Cross has taken a fresh approach to Vis & Rāmin, that is both ingenious and compelling, as it attempts to make sense of the medieval narrative's disjointedness. Vis & Rāmin has been removed from a conventional – vertical and national – history of Persian literature and has been placed horizontally into the broader world of ancient and medieval romance."—Panagiotis Agapitos, Professor of Byzantine Literature, University of Mainz
"At once a focused study of a single literary work – the eleventh-century Persian romance Vis & Rāmin – and an expansive account of literary history seen from a specific vantage point, Cameron Cross's work invites us to rethink our understanding of the 'Global Middle Ages.' His analysis of Abrahamic and Hellenic traditions allows us to see how confessional identities and neoplatonic philosophical commitments were mediated through the genre of romance at the vibrant cultural crossroads that was medieval Persia."—Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University
"Love at a Crux places the eleventh-century Persian verse narrative Vis & Rāmin firmly within the context of transnational romance and also makes a brilliantly argued case for its paramount importance as Persian literature's primary major instance of the genre. This is a well-argued and very rewarding book that should be read by all scholars of both the romance genre and medieval Persian literature."—Dick Davis, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Ohio State University
"Highly original, theoretically alert, and brilliantly written, Love at a Crux provides penetrating insights into one of the most captivating works of classical Persian literature. With great mastery, Cross explores Vis & Rāmin within broader and interconnected literary, theological, and philosophical developments in the Late Antique, medieval Islamicate, and European worlds."—Julia Rubanovich, Senior Lecturer in Persian Language and Literature and Head of the Iranian Studies Program, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

From the Publisher