The didactic mas?navi, as a genre, is characterized by running homiletic discourse studded with illustrative narrative exempla; it is these narrative components that have garnered the most interest in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They were not always such a pronounced feature of the genre, however. As J. T. P. de Bruijn has shown in his study of the first extant didactic mas?navi, the ?adiqat al-?aqiqa of San??i (d. ca. 1131), early manuscripts of the poem contain substantially fewer narratives than those produced in the thirteenth century and later. This presentation builds on de Bruijn’s work to show that narrative content increased not only in manuscripts of San??i’s work, but across the genre as whole, and that this increase in narrative content was bound up with a surge of anecdotes and tales with erotic themes. More specifically, I argue the role of narrative in the didactic mas?navi genre increased throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and that ?A???r (d. c. 1221) led the vanguard in this shift. Although he has long been recognized as a proponent of love mysticism, the extent to which he deviated from his models in terms of his use of erotic narratives has not been fully appreciated. A better understanding of his generic originality allows us to make sense of certain defensive passages within his poems regarding his alleged “storytelling.” It also clarifies the poetic function of his innovative frame-tale structures, which I argue are defensive authorial maneuvers meant to reassert the didactic function of long erotic tales that had not appeared in previous instances of the genre. The first half of this presentation uses quantitative analysis to compare the number and length of narratives, and the prevalence of erotic themes within them, in the didactic mas?navis of ?A???r, San??i, and Ne??mi (d. 1209). This provides a context, in the second half of the presentation, for close readings of ?A???r’s meta-poetic apologia, along with an analysis of the frame-tale structure. The talk thus not only historicizes the development of the genre and clarifies ??A???r’s literary-historical role, but also elucidates a critical feature of medieval Perso-Arabic narrative culture: a surge of interest in the didactic value of erotic tales, accompanied by widespread concerns over their spiritual utility, fictionality, and alleged status as frivolous entertainment, often expressed in gendered terms.

Recent debates in literary studies have converged around theories, histories, and uses of the lyric, with especially exciting discussions about lyric performativity. These debates focus overwhelmingly on Western and/or modern poetic traditions, and this paper joins the effort to boaden these important conversations, and to make them more inclusive, by looking to non-Western lyric examples. The premodern Persian lyric, while firmly fixed in form, is incredibly plastic when it comes to modes, topoi, intertextual ingenuity, and the interpolation of other forms of discourse. The argument of this paper is that an important performative aspect of lyric poetry, and specifically of the way lyric poetry can enact varieties of systematic thought, comes to light if we turn to the understudied micro-genre of the Persian definition poem. I combine contextualized close reading of lyric poems by premodern Persian poets from India and Iran with larger ideas emerging in literary studies today about lyric and performativity (Culler, Marno, Ramazani). Specifically, I look at how ??fe? Sh?r?z? (D.1390) defines the parameters of his own debauchery (rend?); at the despondent attempts of ?Orf? Sh?r?z? (D.1591) to define a broken heart; at Fay? K?sh?n? (D.1679), who defines grace as a divine light filtering through the first poem of his lyric corpus; and finally at B?del Dehlav? (D.1720), an intricate poem by whom opens with the weighty question: “What is Man?” From the reenactment of conversations and debates with mentors about love, propriety, and devotion, to the mechanisms of direct address in prayer, to B?del’s tour-de-force performance of the entangled logics of scholastic theology, grammar, and philosophy, the Persian definition poem emerges as a micro-genre offering a rich repertoire of possible performances – specifically lyric performances – of various forms of systematic thought. This study of definition poems from the premodern Persian tradition offers enticing comparative possibilities (for instance, with the similarly under-studied micro-genre of the definition poem in early modern Europe, which emerges around the same time), and contributes to expanding the parameters of current investigations in literary studies into the work of lyric poetry.

Imagery in Sufi poetry is often interpreted purely allegorically as static symbols pointing to higher spiritual meanings. This approach has a strong historical grounding in Sufism itself in the form of the many poetic commentaries and poetic lexicons produced by Sufis throughout the medieval and early modern period and it continues to exercise considerable influence today in most scholarly readings of Sufi poetry. However, while the Sufi hermeneutic tradition represents an undeniable important interpretative community within Sufism and informed the poetry of many Sufi poets, there are several problems with this approach. Several scholars, for example, have recently argued that its universalizing approach to individual poetic images often fails in the context of specific poems. But, even more importantly, as I will demonstrate in this paper, this Sufi symbolist approach was not the only historically grounded approach to imagery within Sufism itself. Through a close reading of J?m?'s approach to Sufi anacreontic imagery in his poetic commentary, Lav?mi', I will argue for an alternative mode of interpreting imagery in Sufi poetry---an "embodied poetics" that understands imagery as embodied (i.e., formal) performances of meaning. In discussing why the imagery of wine is used to express "meanings" about love, J?m? argues that "expressing meanings in the clothing of forms" functions as a powerful pedagogical tool for training "form-worshipers" in the higher "meanings" of the Sufi path. Stated differently, he is trying to map out the various ways in which wine imagery prompts the reader---by evoking mental simulation of the imagery---to create affective and embodied meaning about the abstract concept of love. The forms and bodies in poetic imagery, and, perhaps most importantly, the way they interact with one another in an unfolding poem, constructs a "metaphoric bridge to the real [meaning]," to slightly adapt the famous Sufi concept of "al-maj?z qantarat al-haq?qah." This is a type of supra-representational meaning that will not be found in Sufi lexicons or theoretical discussions of Sufi metaphysics; it must be located in the body---or, rather, the bodies of the poem and audience members. The paper will conclude by applying this "embodied" interpretative approach to a "city-disturber" (shahr-?sh?b) poem of the great thirteenth-century Persian Sufi poet, Fakhr al-Din 'Ir?q?, illustrating how its thematic concern with self-annihilation and the resultant transgression of social norms animates the "imaginal embodiments" of the poem.

Sketches on Foggy Glass: Mehdi Akhavan Sales and the Floating Time of Poetic Speech In a number of poems by Mehdi Akhavan Sales (1929-1990), one of the foremost representatives of “New Poetry” in Iran, a fictive orality is staged: These texts become decipherable only to a reader attuned to the tradition of epic storytelling (naqqali). The act of speaking is staged through the figure of a storyteller (naqqal) in a setting that was, at the time of the poem’s composition, already obsolescent. This paper proposes to examine the relationship created between poetic text and world through such a fictitious staging of epic performance. In close readings of three narrative poems (Akhar-e ShAhn?meh, Qesseh-ye Shahr-e SangestAn, KhvAn-e Hashtom-o Adamak) we will touch upon the nature of “I” and “we”, the shifting narrative grounds and identities enacted by the narration, the imbrication of past and present in the figure of the storyteller, and the memory spaces that are created both in and through the texts. Although the historical moment at the origin of the poems is never mentioned, “reality” – politics – enters them surreptitiously. In Khvan-e Hashtom, the death of the hero is marked by the empty space of a rhyme present only in the three dots of an ellipsis: symbol at once of censorship and quiet resistance. Who is “we” in these poems? As readers, we are vessels who shift with each instance of the poem’s performance. Through the imaginary speech act of the narrator, we come into being as audience, while at the same time, the epic past becomes overlayed by a tumble-down present. If such an analysis of Akhav?n’s texts is unable to change our understanding of modern Persian poetry as such, it may hone our sense of an Iranian poet giving voice to what those in power were trying to silence: little stick figures traced on a foggy window.

The field of Persian literary studies is progressively accepting contemporary critical postures that conceive lyric poetry as a performative act. From the perspective of this new paradigm (inaugurated decades ago by Kate Hamburger, and recently developed by Jonathan Culler), one may regard the Persianate ghazal form as a lyric genre that can function both as a linguistic trace of simulated experiences and as a performative experience in its own right. This paper approaches the potential performativity of the Persianate ghazal by analyzing the historical contexts in which this lyric form circulated as a social practice capable of expressing and catalyzing spiritual, sensual, and aesthetic ideals. The specific context of this investigation is a widespread practice known as sam?‘. This technical term is often translated as “spiritual audition,” “mystical concert,” or through other expressions that try to grasp the literary, aural, and religious aspects of sam?‘ as a ritual. While some modern scholars have focused on this practice by exclusively considering the “mystical” framework of the contexts in which it would take place, this study frames sam?‘ as a “lyrical ritual” whose horizon of meaning and functions bridges the gap between the expression of sensual desire and the inward quest of the divine. By comparing manuals, historical accounts, and poetic excerpts that comment on sam?‘, this paper will shed light on 13th-century ghazal poetry as a ritualistic tool that constantly oscillates between the realm of language and the territory of embodied experiences. In particular, the study of premodern ghazals that directly refer to the practice of sam?‘ will show how some authors (namely Sa‘di Shirazi, and some of his imitators, Hom?m Tabrizi and Sayf Fargh?ni) would define lyric poetry as a linguistic exercise aimed at producing physiological responses in the bodies of their audiences, both in the context of shared rituals, and through the practice of silent reading.