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Classical Persian Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

William L. Hanaway*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania

Extract

The Study of Classical Persian Literature Can be Separated from the study of modern Persian literature for heuristic reasons—one can be emphasized more than the other in teaching, and the path away from classicism to modernism and beyond can be charted—but it is impossible to draw a decisive line dividing the two. The modern develops out of the classical and constantly interacts with it. The two may be separated, but in the end Persian literature is one and is best thought of as such. The present review, in which classical literature will be the focus, is one such heuristic occasion.

This review will survey the field in terms of the major concerns of literary scholarship that are affected by the work of the Encyclopaedia Iranica and will try to illuminate the role of this reference work as a source of, and an aid to, literary scholarship.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1998

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References

1. Mohammad Qazvini and ᶜAbbas Iqbal, eds., (Tehran, 1329- S./1950).

2. Allah Safa, Zabih Tārīkh-i adabiyāt dar Īrān 3 vols. (Tehran, 1953-62) and 3 vols. in 4 (Tehran, 1972-73).Google Scholar

3. Malik al-Shuᶜara Muhammad Taqi Bahar, Sabk-shināsī yā tārīkh-i taṭawwur-i shiᶜr-i fārsī, (Tehran, 1337/1958), vol. 2, 66-95.Google Scholar

4. To the bibliography one might add the following: Mahdi, Muhsin ed., Kitab alf layla wa layla (Leiden: Brill, 1984)Google Scholar, and Ghazoul, Ferial J. Nocturnal Poetics: The Arabian Nights in Comparative Context (Cairo: AUC Press, 1996)Google Scholar, a later version of her influential The Arabian Nights: A Structural Analysis (Cairo: UNESCO, 1980).Google Scholar

5. The bibliography should be updated by the addition of Sprachman, Paul Suppressed Persian: An Anthology of Forbidden Literature (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 1995).Google Scholar

6. Davis, Dick trans., My Uncle Napoleon (Washington, D.C.: Mage Publishers, 1996).Google Scholar

7. To the bibliography should be added Schroeder, E.The Wild Deer Mathnawi,Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 11 (1952): 118-34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Yarshater, E. Dāstānhā-yi Īrān-i Bāstān (Tehran, 1336/1957-58).Google Scholar

9. Cloak, Margaret M. trans., A Persian in the Court of King George, 1809-10, (London, 1988).Google Scholar

10. Shirazi, Abdi Majnun va Layli (Moscow, 1967)Google Scholar; Rowzat al-Safat (Moscow, 1974)Google Scholar; Haft Akhtar (Moscow, 1974)Google Scholar; and A'in-e Eskandari (Moscow, 1977)Google Scholar, all edited by Abu al-Fazl Rahimov.

11. Aga-Oglu, Mehmet Persian Bookbindings of the Fifteenth Century (Ann Arbor, 1935).CrossRefGoogle Scholar