Persian Literature as World Literature

Mostafa Abedinifard is Assistant Professor without Review of Persian Literary Culture and Civilization at the University of British Columbia, Canada.Omid Azadibougar is Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation at Hunan Normal University, China. He is the author of World Literature and Hedayat’s Poetics of Modernity (2020) and The Persian Novel: Ideology, Fiction and Form in the Periphery (2014).Amirhossein Vafa is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Shiraz University, Iran. He is the author of Recasting American and Persian Literatures (2016).

The power and delight of literature in Persian is known to many readers, worldwide. But how is this magnificent literature related to recent debates on coloniality, nationalism, and world literature? With this collection of studies, we begin to know. The authors' rich scholarship explores both historical and contemporary problems.

• AcknowledgmentsNotes on Transliteration, Translation, and DatesIntroduction: Decolonizing a Peripheral LiteratureAmirhossein Vafa (Shiraz University, Iran), Omid Azadibougar (Hunan Normal University, China), and Mostafa Abedinifard (University of British Columbia, Canada)Part One. Literary Worldliness1. The Birth of the German Ghazal out of the Spirit of World LiteratureAmir Irani-Tehrani (West Point Military Academy, USA)2. Otherworld Literature: Parahuman Pasts in Classical Persian Historiography and EpicSam Lasman (University of Chicago, USA)3. Globalization in Pre- and Postrevolutionary Iranian Literature: A Comparative Study of Authors inside and outside IranNaghmeh Esmaeilpour (Humboldt University, Germany) 4. Contemporary Persian Literature and Digital HumanitiesLaetitia Nanquette (University of New South Wales, Australia)Part Two. Traveling Texts5. Genres without Borders: Reading Modern Iranian Literature beyond "Center" and "Periphery"Marie Ostby (Connecticut College, USA)6. Persian Epistemes in Naim Frashëri's Albanian PoetryAbdulla Rexhepi (University of Prishtina, Kosovo)7. Ecumenism and Globalism in the Reception of Ferdowsi and His Shahnameh: Evidence from the "Baysonqori Preface"Olga M. Davidson (Boston University, USA)8. Cats and Dogs, Manliness, and Misogyny: On the Sindbad-nameh as World LiteratureAlexandra Hoffmann (University of Chicago, USA)9. Cinema Joins Forces with Literature to Form Canon: The Cinematic Afterlife of Sa'edi’s "The Cow" as World LiteratureAdineh Khojastehpour (University of New South Wales, Australia)Part Three. The Transnational Turn 10. Until a Shirt Blossoms Red: Proto-Third Worldism in Ahmad Shamlou’s ManifestoLevi Thompson (University of Colorado Boulder, USA) 11. Translocal Dreams of Justice and Mobility: Fariba Vafi’s Tarlan and Ali Mirdrekvandi’s No Heaven for Gunga DinGay Jennifer Breyley (Monash University, Australia)12. The Purloined Letter: Reconsidering Simin Daneshvar’s Dagh-e Nang and the Politics of Translation in the Landscape of World LiteratureAmy Motlagh (University of California Davis, USA)13. World Literature as Persian LiteratureNavid Naderi (Independent Scholar, Iran)Notes on ContributorsIndex