Pre-Modern and Early Modern Persian Literature: Written while Travelling?

Document Type : Research Papers

Author

Associate Prof. of Iranian Studies University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Abstract

In literary histories written in both Iran and the West it has generally be assumed that early modern Persian literary works are (technically inferior) copies of Western literary works. This has been and is still a claim. Almost no academically and scientifically sound works has substantiated this claim. While there is no point in denying a European influence on early modern Persian literature, there is a need of looking at earlier indigenous Persian literary works in order to see if there are other beginnings or influences on early modern Persian literature. This paper intends to show that Persian travelogues from the 19th century, and especially Hâj Sayyâh’s Safarnâme, reflects a new world view which is a forerunner of the world view that can be found in early modern(ist) Persian literature, indicating that developments in 19th century literary works and intellectual history of Iran also has a role to play in influencing later literature, next to European literary influence. The paper is a description of some aspects of Hâj Sayyâh’s Safarnâme compared to one of the earliest modern(ist) pieces of literature, Mohammad ‘Ali Jamâlzâde’s short story Bile dig, bile choghondar.

Keywords

References

Ahmed, Amr Taher. La “Revolution Literaire”. Verlag der Österrechischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, 2012.
Ferdowsi, Ali, Hâjj Sayyâh, in Encyclopedia Iranica,http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/hajj-sayyah.
Hājj Mohammad- 'Ali Sayyāh, ḵāterāt-e Hājj Sayyāh: Ya dawra-ye ḵawf o wahšat, ed. Hamid Sayyāh, rev. S. Golkār, Tehran, 1967.
---. Safarnâme-ye Hâji Sayyâh. ed. 'Ali Dehbāshi, Tehran, 1984.
---. An Iranian in 19th Century Europe: The Diaries of Haj Sayyah, 1859-1877, tr. Mehrbanoo Nasser Deyhim, Introduction by Peter Avery, Bethesda, MD, 1998.
Jamâlzâde, Mohammad ‘Ali, Yeki bud-o yeki nabud, Berlin, 1921.
Kamshad, Hassan. Modern Persian Prose Literature, Iranbooks, 1996.
Khorrami, Mohammad Mehdi. Modern Reflections of Classical Traditions In Persian Fiction. NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2003.
Moayyad, Heshmat & Sprachman, Paul. Once Upon a Time, New York, 1985.
Pedersen, Claus V. World View in Pre-Revolutionary Iran: Literary Analysis of Five Iranian Authors in the Context of the History of Ideas, Mizân, Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2002 (published in a shortened version in Persian as: پیشگفتار: جهان بینی در ایران پیش از انقلاب (تحلیل ادبی آثار چند نویسنده در بافت تاریخ افکار) به کوشش احمد سمیعی (گیلانی)، زبان و ادبیات، ضمیمه نامه فرهنگستان، 1386 - شماره 29  
Rastegar, Kamran. Literary Modernity between the Middle East and Europe – Textual transactions in nineteenth-century Arabic, English, and Persian literatures. Oxford: Routledge, 2007.
Thomson, Carl. Travel Writing. New York: Routledge, 2011.

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics