Nasrin Askari – författare

Arabic, Persian, and Turkic Poetics: Towards a Post-Eurocentric Literary Theory is a pioneering book that offers a fresh perspective on Arabic, Persian, and Turkic literature in their interrelations. The authors challenge Eurocentric paradigms while creating a framework for exploring these traditions on their own terms. Authored by an international team of scholars, each chapter centres the literary theoretical traditions of their respective literatures, with a focus on the discipline of comparative poetics ('ilm al-balāgha) in the Islamic world. By liberating the study of Islamicate literary texts from Eurocentric theoretical paradigms, the book paves the way for a more inclusive global discourse in literary studies. Specifically, our theoretical roots in comparative poetics and the rhetorical traditions of Arabic, Persian, and Turkic literatures will foster new methods of close reading that are in line with the aesthetic standards intrinsic to these texts and their traditions. Engaging and insightful, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in broadening their understanding of world literature and literary theory.

Nasrin Askari explores the medieval reception of Firdausī’s Shāhnāma, or Book of Kings (completed in 1010 CE) as a mirror for princes. Through her examination of a wide range of medieval sources, Askari demonstrates that Firdausī’s oeuvre was primarily understood as a book of wisdom and advice for kings and courtly elites. In order to illustrate the ways in which the Shāhnāma functions as a mirror for princes, Askari analyses the account about Ardashīr, the founder of the Sasanian dynasty, as an ideal king in the Shāhnāma. Within this context, she explains why the idea of the union of kingship and religion, a major topic in almost all medieval Persian mirrors for princes, has often been attributed to Ardashīr.