PERSIAN LITERATURE 1

The course is among the characterising courses within the Near and Middle East curriculum of the Corso di Laurea in "Lingue, Culture e Società dell'Asia e dell'Africa Mediterranea". The course contributes to the attainment of the teaching goals of the Corso di Laurea in the area of language skills, but it also naturally invests the cultural and humanities areas, with a special attention to the development of a historical and critical approach to texts. The course is to be counted among the cardinal ones as far as the training of the students who have chosen to study Persian language and culture: it converses with all the other LICSAAM courses, not only with the linguistic and historical ones, but also with those concerned with philosophical, religious or artistic issues, equipping the students for the critical work on texts and anticipating a whole set of subsequent more in-depth analysis. More specifically, the main goals of the course are: to provide knowledge on the history and geography of the classical and pre-modern Persian literature; to introduce the students to the main literary genres; to encourage critical judgement as far as the relation between literary text and cultural history is concerned, including the perspective of present-day reception.

At the end of the course the students will be familiar with the main aspects of the history and the geography of Persian literature, with the principal contents and themes of its different genres and expressive shapes, and with the most relevant aesthetic and stylistic problems of its production, transmission and reception, in relation with the social and artistic space of Iran and the Persianate world, in a longue durée perspective. More in general, we also expect to develop a set of critical attitudes in the approach to and the analysis of the text, within the specific ambit of the cosmopolitan transregionality of Persian culture.

No specific prerequisite is required. It is however advisable to have attended, or to attend simultaneously, at least the "Persian language 1" course or in any case to have a basic knowledge of the writing system and the elementary morphology of Persian.

We will provide basic information on the history and the geography of Persian literature from the origins (9th c.) to the 1800s, paying a special attention to the so called "classical" and "post-classical" period (11th-17th c.) and to the diffusion of the Persian literary models not only in Iran but in the Eurasian world as a whole, from Central Asia to the Balkans, from India to the Caucasus. We will analyse dominant motifs and shapes of pre-modern Persian literature, describing the structural features as well as the conceptual and performative relations with the interconnected conceptual spaces, i.e. Sufism, and the social dimensions involved, i.e. the court. Among the different genres and forms of expression, we will focus especially on poetry (mostly lyrical and mystical-philosophical), with dedicated readings of a selection of representative texts.

General bibliography:

- J.T.P. de Bruijn (ed.), "A History of Persian literature. 1. General Introduction to Persian literature", New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009 (excerpts)
- Charles-Henri de Fouchécour, "IRAN viii. Persian Literature (2) Classical", in Encyclopaedia Iranica (also online)
- Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1968 (excerpts)
- Alessandro Bausani, "Storia della letteratura persiana", Milano: Nuova Accademia, 1960 (excerpts)
-J.T.P. de Bruijn, "Persian Sufi Poetry. An Introduction to the Mystical Use of Classical Poems", Richmond Surrey: Curzon, 1997 (also Routledge 2014)

Further bibliography will be provided at the beginning of the course

The final exam will consist of a discussion with the instructor on the various themes of the course. Students who are not planning to attend the classes are kindly advised to contact the instructor in advance in order to arrange a dedicated program.

Traditional, with the support of multimedia tools (powerpoint, etc.)

Italian

oral