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The Persian epic that inspired Eric Clapton's unforgettable love song "Layla" and that Lord Byron called "the Romeo and Juliet of the East," in a masterly new translation A Penguin Classic The iconic love story of the Middle East, by a twelfth-century Persian poet who has been compared to Shakespeare for his subtlety, inventiveness, and dramatic force, Layli and Majnun tells of star-crossed lovers whose union is tragically thwarted by their families and whose passion continues to ripple out across the centuries. Theirs is a love that lasts a lifetime, and in Nezami's immortal telling, erotic longing blends with spiritual self-denial in an allegory of Sufi aspiration, as the amenities of civilization give way to the elemental wilderness, desire is sublimated into a mystical renunciation of the physical world, and the soul confronts its essence. This is a tour de force of Persian literature, in a translation that captures the extraordinary power and virtuosity of the original.
The work of Nizami Ganjavi, a classical poet of the twelfth century, is fueling new cultural debate in Iran in recent years. The dominant discourse encourages the reading of the texts in light of biographical or theological conventions and religious motives. These essays explore Nizami s influential role and his portrayal of issues related to love, women, and science, stressing his preoccupation with the art of speech as a major impetus behind his literary activity.
This book offers new insights into the twelfth-century Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi. Challenging the dominant interpretation of Nezami’s poetry as the product of mysticism or Islam, this book explores Nezami’s literary techniques such as his pictorial allegory and his profound conceptualization of poetry, rhetoric, and eloquence. It employs several theoretical and methodological approaches to clarify the nature of his artistic approach to poetry. Chapters explore Nezami’s understanding of rhetoric and literature as Sakhon, his interest in literary genres, the diversity of themes explored in his Five Treasures, the sources of Nezami’s creativity, and his literary devices. Exploring themes such as love, religion, science, wine, gender, and philosophy, this study compares Nezami’s works to other giants of Persian poetry such as Ferdowsi, Jami, Rudaki, and others. The book argues that Nezami’s main concern was to weave poetry rather than to promote any specific ideology.
Evgenii E. Berthels' compelling book describes the life, work and context of Nizami Ganjavi and his poems. His book not only details fascinating stories about the history of Azerbaijan but also portrays Nizami as a remarkable figure, not only in literature and art, but also human civilization in general. Berthel's evaluation of Nizami reveals how his work transcends national, racial, religious and geographical borders, and explores how Nizami's poetry is still relevant 750 years later.
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 ...
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"It was a refreshing, old-fashioned pleasure to read Julie Scott Meisami’s verse translation of, and introduction and notes to, this twelfth-century Persian allegorical romance." —Orhan Pahmuk, in the Times Literary Supplement
Among the great works of world literature, perhaps one of the least familiar to English readers is the Shahnameh: ThePersian Book of Kings, the national epic of Persia. This prodigious narrative, composed by the poet Ferdowsi between the years 980 and 1010, tells the story of pre- Islamic Iran, beginning in the mythic time of Creation and continuing forward to the Arab invasion in the seventh century. As a window on the world, Shahnameh belongs in the company of such literary masterpieces as Dante’s Divine Comedy, the plays of Shakespeare, the epics of Homer— classics whose reach and range bring whole cultures into view. In its pages are unforgettable moments of national triumph and fail...
Over the centuries, religion has inspired some of civilization's most beautiful poetry, and certain Persian Muslims, the Sufi, have created intricately wrought poems celebrating peace and harmony. The world is a beautiful garden of mystery when viewed through the eyes of the Sufi. Each poem, most from the 1200's, is clearly and fully explained in its historical, religious, political, and spiritual context. Written to propagate tranquility and harmony through a better understanding of an important religion and its impact on literature, Garden of the Sufi is a lavishly thorough exploration of Sufi poetry and philosophy.
What does it mean to be human? Humanism has mostly considered this question from a Western perspective. Through a detailed examination of a vast literary tradition, Hamid Dabashi asks that question anew, from a non-European point of view. The answers are fresh, provocative, and deeply transformative. This groundbreaking study of Persian humanism presents the unfolding of a tradition as the creative and subversive subconscious of Islamic civilization. Exploring how 1,400 years of Persian literature have taken up the question of what it means to be human, Dabashi proposes that the literary subconscious of a civilization may also be the undoing of its repressive measures. This could account for...