In the first half of the 20th century, Nima developed an early form of modern Persian poetry with unequal lengths of lines and a different notion of rhyme. Nima developed a poetic form that was not symmetrical in its shape and music and was (partially) free from restrictions of rhyme and meter. At the same time Nima was theorizing a modern…[Read more]

This monograph does not represent the 1979 Revolution as a rapture in Persian poetry, rather it sees the continuity; Shams demonstrates that Islamic Republican poetry was in fact in the making decades before the Revolution. In its study of war poetry, this monograph remains focused on official poets alone. For an understanding of other (official)…[Read more]

Persian literature used to be visibly worldly when Persian was a lingua franca in a vast space from Balkan to China. With the British colonialism in the India and the rise of nation states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Persian lost its status and became more national in various contexts. In Iran it only got worsened with sanctions,…[Read more]

Persian literature used to be visibly worldly when Persian was a lingua franca in a vast space from Balkan to China. With the British colonialism in the India and the rise of nation states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Persian lost its status and became more national in various contexts. In Iran it only got worsened with sanctions,…[Read more]

Persian literature used to be visibly worldly when Persian was a lingua franca in a vast space from Balkan to China. With the British colonialism in the India and the rise of nation states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Persian lost its status and became more national in various contexts. In Iran it only got worsened with sanctions,…[Read more]

Book review

Walt Whitman (1819–1892), the father of American free verse, and Nima Yushij (1897–1960), the father of Persian New Poetry, each played a central role in his respective poetic tradition. Whitman’s free verse and Yushij’s New Poetry are the results of translating the discourse of democracy to a literary discourse. In this way, there are multipl…[Read more]

Walt Whitman (1819–1892), the father of American free verse, and Nima Yushij (1897–1960), the father of Persian New Poetry, each played a central role in his respective poetic tradition. Whitman’s free verse and Yushij’s New Poetry are the results of translating the discourse of democracy to a literary discourse. In this way, there are multipl…[Read more]

Walt Whitman (1819–1892), the father of American free verse, and Nima Yushij (1897–1960), the father of Persian New Poetry, each played a central role in his respective poetic tradition. Whitman’s free verse and Yushij’s New Poetry are the results of translating the discourse of democracy to a literary discourse. In this way, there are multipl…[Read more]

Walt Whitman (1819–1892), the father of American free verse, and Nima Yushij (1897–1960), the father of Persian New Poetry, each played a central role in his respective poetic tradition. Whitman’s free verse and Yushij’s New Poetry are the results of translating the discourse of democracy to a literary discourse. In this way, there are multipl…[Read more]

The author does justice to a subject often mentioned, yet rarely studied. He succeeds in its purpose, i.e., providing “as genuine a picture as possible of the censorship of literature after the 1979 Revolution” followed by discussing “the effects of this unique censorship regime on the Iranian literature of the time” (9). Drawing from his experie…[Read more]

Through the case of Emerson’s appropriation of Persian poetry this volume provides a thought-provoking example of how the literary founding father of a nation is cosmopolitan and receptive of foreign cultures in what might seem a purely “nationalistic” agenda. It will appeal to those in the field of Persian literature, comparative liter…[Read more]