A Formal Foundation for Comparative Study of the Late Persianate

What is it about?

"A Formal Foundation for Comparative Study of the Late Persianate" looks to features of poetic form shared across Persian and Arabic during the premodern and modern periods to situate the literary traditions of these two languages in relation to current studies of world literature. The article challenges Eurocentric approaches to world literature by attending to formal poetic requirements found in Arabic and Persian that modern poets innovated on in similar ways across the two traditions. These formal requirements are particular to Arabic, Persian, and other Middle Eastern poetic traditions, and their parallel development thus challenges narratives of influence that center the West to understand and analyze literary developments during the modern period of globalization.

Featured Image