14358

WiSe 19/20: In the Garden of Languages: Iranian Poetry and Imagery from Avesta to the Indo-Persian Literature

Shervin Farridnejad

Comments

The seminar provides basic knowledge of the essential characteristics, rhetorical and stylistic devices, metric and verse, prosody as well as the imagery of Iranian poesy and poetry from the antiquity up to the early modern period. The course begins with a brief introduction to the fundamental principles of Iranian literature. After a general introduction to the peculiarities of classical poetry and the periodization according to stylistic aspects, various literary genres and their most important protagonists will be examined. After the general introduction, the most important pre-Islamic Iranian textual testimonies will be discussed which their characteristics and evaluations are of great importance for the reconstruction of Iranian literary history in the pre-Islamic period and afterwards. Subsequently, the students become acquainted with the most prominent examples of Classical Persian poetry from the beginnings of Iranian literature to the Safavid period as well as in the Indo-Persian literature of Mughal India up to the18th century. For centuries, Persian has served also as the higher official and educational language in the Mughal Empire in India and other Islamic-governed states of the Indian subcontinent. By means of exemplary specimens of individual literary epochs and text genres from a historical and stylistic perspective, topics will be deepened through the semester. close

Suggested reading

Arberry, Arthur John. 1958. Classical Persian literature. London: Allen & Unwin [Reprint: 2004, Routledge Curzon]. Bruijn, Johannes Thomas Pieter de (ed.). 2009. General introduction to Persian literature. (A History of Persian Literature 1). London: I.B. Tauris. Companion Volume 1. (A History of Persian Literature). London: I.B. Tauris. Elwell-Sutton, Laurence P. The Persian metres. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Emmerick, Ronald Eric, und Maria Macuch, Hrsg. The Literature of pre-Islamic Iran. Bd. Companion Volume 1. A History of Persian Literature. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009. Rypka, Jan. 1959. Iranische Literaturgeschichte. (Iranische Texte und Hilfsbücher 4). Leipzig: Harrassowitz Verlag. Schimmel, Annemarie. 1984. Stern und Blume: die Bilderwelt der persischen Poesie. (Sammlung Harrassowitz). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. [erweiterte Englische Übersetzüng: Schimmel, Annemarie. A Two-Colored Brocade: The Imagery of Persian Poetry. The University of North Carolina Press, 1992.] Thiesen, Finn. A Manual of Classical Persian Prosody: With Chapters on Urdu, Karakhanidic, and Ottoman Prosody. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1982. close