The popularity of Fuzuli’s romance Leyla ve Mecnun is probably unmatched by any other pre-modern Turkish/Turkic romance. Acknowledging that the work is a product of literary imitation, most scholars agree that it is an original masterpiece. Based on the premise that in the self-consciously intertextual mode of literary creation of the Persico-Turkic literary tradition, understanding the relation between the imitating work and its model was an essential component of understanding and appreciating the new work itself, the paper discusses how Fuzuli’s elaboration of the Leyla ve Mecnun departed from its model, Nizami Gencevi and how it relates to previous other elaborations of the topic. More specifically, it discusses on one hand the protagonist’s nocturnal supplication to the stars and the planets, a cosmological journey which evokes Nizami Gencevi; on the other hand it presents Mecnun’s soliloquy on the complementary relation of beauty and love, a paradigmatic discussion which, however, is not found in Fuzuli’s models and seems to be his own innovation. I intend to establish how Fuzuli departed from his models and what these differences may reveal about the aesthetics he followed.

This paper takes as its starting point the problem modern scholarship has had in classifying the 11th century poet/philosopher/traveller Nasir-i Khusraw within the pantheon of classical Persian poets. A particular problem is the contention that he is merely a didactic poet or a poet of versified philosophy lacking in ‘poetical feeling.’ I shall attempt to prove that Nasir Khusraw’s odes are his collective apologia, an imaging of self as a complex imbrication of didactics and vindication held together by the intensity of language and feeling that poetry necessarily provides. Central to this thesis will be the task of unravelling Nasir’s theory of sukhan— speech, language, or Logos— in the qasidas with respect to poetic language and the poet’s use of it. Certainly for an eleventh century Persian of Nasir-i Khusraw's lofty station and education, poetry was the highest form of expression. Nasir often discusses the function of poetry and of the poet in the qasidas by ironically playing with and mocking the conventions of the form and revealing an ever-present self-awareness; ultimately, the purpose of the qasida (literally, "purposive poem") for him becomes not just to commemorate himself, as it partially is for the court poets he so despises, but also to incarnate his life and self with an emotive immediacy and a technical, allusive language that prose simply cannot provide him. The result is a radical rendering of speaker, form and meaning. Nasir's theory of poetry and the poet, in apposition to corresponding and contrasting notions in modern European criticism, will together form an analytical lens with which to examine this rendering. Finally, I shall briefly trace Nasir-i Khusraw’s influence on classical Persian poetry with respect to the character of the philosopher/poet. He is indeed the precursor to the Sufi whose poetry is the physical link between the worlds of the unseen and the unseen and the ecstatic complaint of a union severed. Thus for Nasir-i Khusraw, poetic composition transforms not just knowledge of things, but also the knower himself into a feeling, thinking, privileged self grappling with and exposing the truths of human existence. Nasir's notion of composition and composer was unique in the Persian poetry of his time and was indeed continually reinterpreted and corrupted over the ensuing centuries of Persian poetry.

Two important, long-standing, and distinct debates surrounding the figure and poetry of Hafiz have prompted this paper. The first concerns his historical status, whether the person of Shams al-D?n Mu?ammad “??fi?” Sh?r?z? (d. 792/1390) was a libertine influenced by the images of mystical poetry, or an actual Sufi, whose anti-sanctimonious inclinations found symbolic disguise in ribaldry tropes. The second debate surrounding Hafiz, and the ghazal form more broadly, is that of order: whether the particular sequence of lines indeed matters to the poet or the poet’s audience. Instead of answering these questions, this paper attempts to address a possible impetus for the very existence of such uncertainties and the fascination they evoke, namely, a quality in the poetry of Hafiz that may lend to it its unique voice of equivocation. What is called “hidden narrative” is in fact a phenomenon that exists entirely for the reader or listener, a sense of a larger and vaguely remembered narrative, intimated through fragmented allusions, images, names, and places. Using critical theory concerning the role of narrative in lyrical poetry, especially Herbert F. Tucker’s discussion of “overhearing” lyric, this paper investigates a feature of Hafiz’ poetry which might be centrally responsible for the complementary sense of bewilderment and appeal it instills in its audience. This sense of profound story, while in some ways similar to the use of narrative in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and the Qur’an, is nevertheless distinctive – made possible by the poet’s signature use of opening lines, metaphor, minimalism, and evocative disconnectedness. Lastly, this paper applies its literary investigation of Hafiz to medieval Sufi theory concerning the soul’s receptive encounter with meaning and beauty, in an attempt to explain why N?r al-D?n ‘Abd al-Ra?m?n J?m? (d. 898/1492), for example, while unsure of Hafiz’ historical stance as an initiated wayfarer, emphatically affirms the poet’s congruence to the taste of Sufis.