A01=Fatemeh Keshavarz
Anathema
Aphorism
Author_Fatemeh Keshavarz
Avesta
Calligraphy
Canonization
Category=DSBH
Category=DSC
Epithet
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Erudition
Ghazal
Glorification
God
Good and evil
Jabali
Mircea Eliade
Mysticism
Orientalism
Poetry
Religion
Renunciation
Sharia
Product details
- ISBN 9781570036224
- Weight: 440g
- Dimensions: 164 x 236mm
- Publication Date: 28 May 2006
- Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Recite in the Name of the Red Rose introduces Western readers to constructions of the sacred in twentieth-century Iranian poetry. Sifting through the lives and writings of modern and classical poets, Fatemeh Keshavarz provides a systematic examination of the array of religious impulses in recent Persian verse. Viewing poetry as the site of the emergence of the self and the sacred, she confirms that sanctification is not static in its forms but continuously in flux and that the poetic modes used to articulate the sanctified are equally fluid. Keshevarz begins by introducing the core concepts that define and detach religion and secularity in contemporary Iranian society. By thoroughly discussing the nature of classical Persian poetry she makes clear that expressions of the sacred in verse have been open to negotiation and change even in the premodern period. However, in Iran's modern poetic landscape Keshavarz uncovers many new patterns of expressing the sacred. In individual chapters on the writings of Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-1967), Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1981), and Ahmad Shamlu (1925-2000), she discusses the paradigmatic ways prominent poets of the twentieth century have related to the sacred in a nation forging its vision of modernity. While most scholars perceive current Iranian culture to be sharply divided between literalist conservatives and secular progressives, Keshavarz identifies provocative shades of spiritual expression less rigidly defined and hence neglected by the established critical tradition. Bringing such expression to the fore of scholarly attention, her study invites a more nuanced appreciation of the crosscurrents of religion and literature in recent Middle Eastern culture.
A native of Iran, Fatemeh Keshavarz is a professor of Persian and comparative literature and chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of Reading Mystical Lyric: The Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi (USCP ISBN 1-57003-584-9).
