Literary Subterfuge and Contemporary Persian Fiction

For at least the past several decades, Persian literary scholarship has drawn its conceptual framework largely from the social sciences. Despite several noteworthy exceptions, a tendency to read Persian literature for its sociopolitical content still guides the way scholars write about and teach th...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Samad Alavi
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: International Institute of Islamic Thought 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/6344ddd0d27641ca884e0d05d9834fb5
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
id oai:doaj.org-article:6344ddd0d27641ca884e0d05d9834fb5
record_format dspace
spelling oai:doaj.org-article:6344ddd0d27641ca884e0d05d9834fb52021-12-02T19:41:38ZLiterary Subterfuge and Contemporary Persian Fiction10.35632/ajis.v32i4.10082690-37332690-3741https://doaj.org/article/6344ddd0d27641ca884e0d05d9834fb52015-10-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/1008https://doaj.org/toc/2690-3733https://doaj.org/toc/2690-3741 For at least the past several decades, Persian literary scholarship has drawn its conceptual framework largely from the social sciences. Despite several noteworthy exceptions, a tendency to read Persian literature for its sociopolitical content still guides the way scholars write about and teach the field today. Indeed, a brief survey of course syllabi with “Persian literature” in their titles would no doubt reveal that instructors (the present writer included) by and large introduce writers and their works based on non-literary socio-historical developments, either arranging texts chronologically by their years of production or presenting them (still usually chronologically) as reflections of the historical events, social movements, and ideological currents that shaped the societies from which those texts arose. Mehdi Khorrami’s Literary Subterfuge and Contemporary Persian Fiction: Who Writes Iran? challenges this trend, arguing that we do a great disservice to both individual texts and literary studies as a discipline when we consider non-literary factors as the primary criteria by which to analyze and schematize literary works. Instead, while acknowledging the importance of social, historical, and ideological contexts, in other words the world outside the text, Khorrami’s study of contemporary Persian fiction contends that we must scrutinize the world inside the texts – their aesthetic, linguistic, and formal devices and concepts – to develop a comprehensive view of literature’s historical evolution. The work under review argues that modernist Persian fiction evolves from a counter-discursive to a non-discursive position vis-à-vis official discourses in Iran, primarily under the Islamic Republic. The author’s conception of discursivity relates directly to his understanding of the term modernist. The single ... Samad AlaviInternational Institute of Islamic ThoughtarticleIslamBP1-253ENAmerican Journal of Islam and Society, Vol 32, Iss 4 (2015)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
topic Islam
BP1-253
spellingShingle Islam
BP1-253
Samad Alavi
Literary Subterfuge and Contemporary Persian Fiction
description For at least the past several decades, Persian literary scholarship has drawn its conceptual framework largely from the social sciences. Despite several noteworthy exceptions, a tendency to read Persian literature for its sociopolitical content still guides the way scholars write about and teach the field today. Indeed, a brief survey of course syllabi with “Persian literature” in their titles would no doubt reveal that instructors (the present writer included) by and large introduce writers and their works based on non-literary socio-historical developments, either arranging texts chronologically by their years of production or presenting them (still usually chronologically) as reflections of the historical events, social movements, and ideological currents that shaped the societies from which those texts arose. Mehdi Khorrami’s Literary Subterfuge and Contemporary Persian Fiction: Who Writes Iran? challenges this trend, arguing that we do a great disservice to both individual texts and literary studies as a discipline when we consider non-literary factors as the primary criteria by which to analyze and schematize literary works. Instead, while acknowledging the importance of social, historical, and ideological contexts, in other words the world outside the text, Khorrami’s study of contemporary Persian fiction contends that we must scrutinize the world inside the texts – their aesthetic, linguistic, and formal devices and concepts – to develop a comprehensive view of literature’s historical evolution. The work under review argues that modernist Persian fiction evolves from a counter-discursive to a non-discursive position vis-à-vis official discourses in Iran, primarily under the Islamic Republic. The author’s conception of discursivity relates directly to his understanding of the term modernist. The single ...
format article
author Samad Alavi
author_facet Samad Alavi
author_sort Samad Alavi
title Literary Subterfuge and Contemporary Persian Fiction
title_short Literary Subterfuge and Contemporary Persian Fiction
title_full Literary Subterfuge and Contemporary Persian Fiction
title_fullStr Literary Subterfuge and Contemporary Persian Fiction
title_full_unstemmed Literary Subterfuge and Contemporary Persian Fiction
title_sort literary subterfuge and contemporary persian fiction
publisher International Institute of Islamic Thought
publishDate 2015
url https://doaj.org/article/6344ddd0d27641ca884e0d05d9834fb5
work_keys_str_mv AT samadalavi literarysubterfugeandcontemporarypersianfiction
_version_ 1718376145151328256