Reorienting Modernism in Arabic and Persian Poetry

Comparatively studies, through both form and content, the development of Arabic and Persian modernist poetry during the mid-twentieth century.

Levi Thompson (Author)

9781009164474, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 December 2022

280 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2 cm, 0.51 kg

Re-orienting Modernism in Arabic and Persian Poetry is the first book to systematically study the parallel development of modernist poetry in Arabic and Persian. It presents a fresh line of comparative inquiry into minor literatures within the field of world literary studies. Focusing on Arabic-Persian literary exchanges allows readers to better understand the development of modernist poetry in both traditions and in turn challenge Europe's position at the center of literary modernism. The argument contributes to current scholarly efforts to globalize modernist studies by reading Arabic and Persian poetry comparatively within the context of the Cold War to establish the Middle East as a significant participant in wider modernist developments. To illuminate profound connections between Arabic and Persian modernist poetry in both form and content, the book takes up works from key poets including the Iraqis Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati and the Iranians Nima Yushij, Ahmad Shamlu, and Forough Farrokhzad.

A Note on Transliteration
Acknowledgments
Introduction: mapping a modernist geography in Arabic and Persian poetry
Part I. Crafting a Modernist Geography Across Arabic and Persian Poetry: 1. Formal connections, literary criticism, and political commitment
2. Travel forms: Arabic prosody, craft, and N?m? Y?sh?j's Persian new poetry
Part II. Imagining New Worlds: 3. A?mad Sh?ml?'s manifesto and proto-third world literature
4. Badr Sh?kir al-Sayy?b between communism and world literature
Part III: Aftermath: Modernist Ends in Arabic and Persian Poetry
5. Honoring commitments: ?Abd al-Wahh?b al-Bay?t?'s existential trials
6. Winter in the modernist garden: Fur?gh Farrukhz?d's posthumous poetry and the death of modernism
Conclusion: re-orienting modernism
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary theory [DSA]