The Oral Background of Persian Epics

The Oral Background of Persian Epics PDF

Author: Kumiko Yamamoto

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 9789004125872

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This book proposes a set of criteria for determining the extent to which oral tradition influences written Persian epics. The criteria are applied to Persian epics, the Shah-name (c. 1000) and the Garshasp-name (c. 1064-66).

Shahnameh

Shahnameh PDF

Author: Firdawsī

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 936

ISBN-13: 9780670034857

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A new translation of the late-tenth-century Persian epic follows its story of pre-Islamic Iran's mythic time of Creation through the seventh-century Arab invasion, tracing ancient Persia's incorporation into an expanding Islamic empire. 15,000 first printing.

Khwadāynāmag The Middle Persian Book of Kings

Khwadāynāmag The Middle Persian Book of Kings PDF

Author: Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-04-17

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9004277641

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In Khwadāynāmag. The Middle Persian Book of Kings Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila analyses the lost sixth-century historiographical work of the Sasanians, its lost Arabic translations, and the sources of Firdawsī's Shāhnāme.

Routledge Handbook of Post Classical and Contemporary Persian Literature

Routledge Handbook of Post Classical and Contemporary Persian Literature PDF

Author: Kamran Talattof

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-06-05

Total Pages: 748

ISBN-13: 1351341677

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Routledge Handbook of Post Classical and Contemporary Persian Literature contains scholarly essays and sample texts related to Persian literature from the 17th century to the present day. It includes analyses of free verse poetry, short stories, novels, prison writings, memoirs, and plays. 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. The related Handbook (also edited by Kamran Talattof ), Routledge Handbook of Ancient, Classical, and Late Classical Persian Literature covers Persian literary works from the ancient or pre-Islamic era to roughly the end of the 16th century.

Shahnama Studies III

Shahnama Studies III PDF

Author: Gabrielle R. van den Berg

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-11-27

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 9004356258

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Shahnama Studies III offers new insights into the reception of the Shahnama or Book of Kings, composed by the Persian poet Firdausi in the 10th-11th century in eastern Iran.

Comparative Literature and Classical Persian Poetics

Comparative Literature and Classical Persian Poetics PDF

Author: Olga M. Davidson

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780674073203

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Olga M. Davidson applies comparative literary approaches to classical Persian traditions of composing and performing poetry and song. She focuses on the eleventh-century ce epic Shahnama and its relationship to other genres embedded in it, including forms of verbal art originally composed without the aid of writing, such as women's laments.

The Shahnameh

The Shahnameh PDF

Author: Hamid Dabashi

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2019-01-08

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 0231544944

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The Shahnameh, an epic poem recounting the foundation of Iran across mythical, heroic, and historical ages, is the beating heart of Persian literature and culture. Composed by Abu al-Qasem Ferdowsi over a thirty-year period and completed in the year 1010, the epic has entertained generations of readers and profoundly shaped Persian culture, society, and politics. For a millennium, Iranian and Persian-speaking people around the globe have read, memorized, discussed, performed, adapted, and loved the poem. In this book, Hamid Dabashi brings the Shahnameh to renewed global attention, encapsulating a lifetime of learning and teaching the Persian epic for a new generation of readers. Dabashi insightfully traces the epic’s history, authorship, poetic significance, complicated legacy of political uses and abuses, and enduring significance in colonial and postcolonial contexts. In addition to explaining and celebrating what makes the Shahnameh such a distinctive literary work, he also considers the poem in the context of other epics, such as the Aeneid and the Odyssey, and critical debates about the concept of world literature. Arguing that Ferdowsi’s epic and its reception broached this idea long before nineteenth-century Western literary criticism, Dabashi makes a powerful case that we need to rethink the very notion of “world literature” in light of his reading of the Persian epic.

Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings

Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings PDF

Author: Olga M. Davidson

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-07-15

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1501733974

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A masterpiece of Persian Classical epic, the Shahnama or Book of Kings was composed by Abu'l-Qasem Ferdowsi at the beginning of the eleventh century. Because the Shahnama presents itself as a chronicle of the reigns of the shahs from the primordial founders to the Sasanian dynasty which ended in 651, scholarly attention has centered on the question of its historical accuracy. Addressing the literary as well as the historical and mythological aspects of the Shahnama, Olga M. Davidson makes this centerpiece of Iranian culture accessible to Western readers. Drawing on recent work in epic studies and oral poetics, Davidson considers analogies with Classical and medieval European narratives as she investigates the poem's social contexts. Her interpretation of the Shahnama focuses on both the figure of the poet himself and on his protagonists-the superhuman hero Rostam and the historical or historicized shahs. Exploring the Shahnama as an example of court poetry designed to glorify the idea of empire, Davidson identifies as a driving force of Ferdowsi's narrative a strong current of antagonism between king and hero. Ironically, she shows, it is the epic hero himself who poses the greatest threat to the concept of kingship that he is sworn to defend. Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings will be welcomed by readers working in such fields as comparative literature, Middle Eastern Studies, folklore, literary theory, and comparative religion.

The Sistani Cycle of Epics and Iran’s National History

The Sistani Cycle of Epics and Iran’s National History PDF

Author: Saghi Gazerani

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-11-16

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 9004282963

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This work examines the entire corpus of the Sistani Cycle of Epics, both parts included in Ferdowsi’s Shāhnāmeh and those appearing in separate manuscripts. It argues that the so-called “epic literature” of Iran constitutes a kind of historiography, encapsulating reflections of watershed events of Iran’s antiquity. By examining the symbiotic relationship of the texts’ content and form, the underpinning discourse of the various stories is revealed to have been shaped by polemics of political legitimacy and religious conflict. This discourse, however, is not abstract. The stories narrate, within their generic constraint, some of the affairs of the Sistani kingdom and its relationship to the Parthian throne, mainly from the first century BCE to the end of the second century CE.

Poetics and Politics of Iran’s National Epic, the Sh?hn?meh

Poetics and Politics of Iran’s National Epic, the Sh?hn?meh PDF

Author: M. Omidsalar

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2011-11-16

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1137001283

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This book considers some of the Western interpretations of The Shahnameh - Iran's national epic, and argues that these interpretations are not only methodologically flawed, but are also more revealing of Western concerns and anxieties about Iran than they are about the Shahnameh.