Persian Literature as World Literature

by Mostafa Abedinifard (Editor), Thomas Oliver Beebee (Editor), Omid Azadibougar (Editor), Amirhossein Vafa (Editor)

Overview

Confronting nationalistic and nativist interpreting practices in Persianate literary scholarship, Persian Literature as World Literature makes a case for reading these literatures as world literature-as transnational, worldly texts that expand beyond local and national penchants. Working through an idea of world literature that is both cosmopolitan and critical of any monologic view on globalization, the contributors to this volume revisit the early and contemporary circulation of Persianate literatures across neighboring and distant cultures, and seek innovative ways of developing a transnational Persian literary studies, engaging in constructive dialogues with the global forces surrounding, and shaping, Persianate societies and cultures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501354229
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/12/2021
Series:	Literatures as World Literature
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Mostafa Abedinifard is Assistant Professor without Review of Persian Literary Culture and Civilization at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

Omid Azadibougar is Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation at Hunan Normal University, China. He is the author of World Literature and Hedayat's Poetics of Modernity (2020) and The Persian Novel: Ideology, Fiction and Form in the Periphery (2014).

Amirhossein Vafa is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Shiraz University, Iran. He is the author of Recasting American and Persian Literatures (2016).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Notes on Transliteration, Translation, and Dates
Introduction: Decolonizing a Peripheral Literature
Amirhossein Vafa (Shiraz University, Iran), Omid Azadibougar (Hunan Normal University, China), and Mostafa Abedinifard (University of British Columbia, Canada)
Part One. Literary Worldliness
1. The Birth of the German Ghazal out of the Spirit of World Literature
Amir Irani-Tehrani (West Point Military Academy, USA)
2. Otherworld Literature: Parahuman Pasts in Classical Persian Historiography and Epic
Sam Lasman (University of Chicago, USA)
3. Globalization in Pre- and Postrevolutionary Iranian Literature: A Comparative Study of Authors inside and outside Iran
Naghmeh Esmaeilpour (Humboldt University, Germany)
4. Contemporary Persian Literature and Digital Humanities
Laetitia Nanquette (University of New South Wales, Australia)
Part Two. Traveling Texts
5. Genres without Borders: Reading Modern Iranian Literature beyond "Center" and "Periphery"
Marie Ostby (Connecticut College, USA)
6. Persian Epistemes in Naim Frashëri's Albanian Poetry
Abdulla Rexhepi (University of Prishtina, Kosovo)
7. Ecumenism and Globalism in the Reception of Ferdowsi and His Shahnameh: Evidence from the "Baysonqori Preface"
Olga M. Davidson (Boston University, USA)
8. Cats and Dogs, Manliness, and Misogyny: On the Sindbad-nameh as World Literature
Alexandra Hoffmann (University of Chicago, USA)
9. Cinema Joins Forces with Literature to Form Canon: The Cinematic Afterlife of Sa'edi's "The Cow" as World Literature
Adineh Khojastehpour (University of New South Wales, Australia)
Part Three. The Transnational Turban
10. Until a Shirt Blossoms Red: Proto-Third Worldism in Ahmad Shamlou's Manifesto
Levi Thompson (University of Colorado Boulder, USA)
11. Translocal Dreams of Justice and Mobility: Fariba Vafi's Tarlan and Ali Mirdrekvandi's No Heaven for Gunga Din
Gay Jennifer Breyley (Monash University, Australia)
12. The Purloined Letter: Reconsidering Simin Daneshvar's Dagh-e Nang and the Politics of Translation in the Landscape of World Literature
Amy Motlagh (University of California Davis, USA)
13. World Literature as Persian Literature
Navid Naderi (Independent Scholar, Iran)
Notes on Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

The power and delight of literature in Persian is known to many readers, worldwide. But how is this magnificent literature related to recent debates on coloniality, nationalism, and world literature? With this collection of studies, we begin to know. The authors' rich scholarship explores both historical and contemporary problems.” —Raewyn Connell, University Chair, University of Sydney, Australia, and author of Southern Theory: Social Science and the Global Dynamics of Knowledge (2007)

“This collection of essays is excellent because the theoretical and methodological issues they discuss are not just important for rethinking the study of Persian literature, but are highly relevant to the study of any non-Western literature. Anyone interested in literary studies, particularly in comparative and cross-cultural studies, will find a lot in this collection to be stimulating, thought-provoking, and beneficial. Highly recommended!” —Zhang Longxi, Chair Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation, City University of Hong Kong, and author of From Comparison to World Literature (2014)

“The contributors to this volume approach Persian literary criticism with sensitivity and seek to liberate the field from nationalist frameworks that all too often have hindered the study of Persian literature in the west. The essays collected here open our eyes to the diverse ways in which the Persian literary system has influenced other transnational literary systems and how, in turban, it has been shaped by those encounters over the past millennium and more.” —Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, Associate Professor of Persian Literature, University of Oxford, UK

From the Publisher