The Politics of Writing in Iran: A History of Modern Persian Literature

262 Pages·2000·48.53 MB·English

by  Kamran Talattof

The P o l i t i c s
Writing
o f
i n Iran
A History of
Modern Persian
Literature
Kamran Talattof
Syracuse University Press
Univ. Library, UC Santa Cruz 2000
Copyright © 2000 by Syracuse University Press
Syracuse, New York 13244-516o
All Rights Reserved
First Edition 2000
00 01 02 OJ 04 05 o6 7 6 5 4 J 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 239.48'1984. ™
00
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Talattof, Kamran.
The politics of writing in Iran : a history of modem Persian literature /
Kamran Talattof. - 1st ed.
p. cm.
Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph. D.)- University of
Michigan, 1996.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-8156-2818-8 (cloth: alk. paper). - ISBN 0-8156-2819-6 (pbk.:
alk. paper)
1. Persian literature-20th century-History and criticism.
2. Politics and literature-Iran-History-20th century.
3. Literature and society-Iran-History-20th century. 4. Literary
movements-Iran. I. Title.
PK6415.5.T35 1999
891'.5509358--dc21 99-37867
Manufactured in the United States of America
To the courageous women of Iran
and the Middle East
Kamran Talattof teaches Persian language and literature and Iranian cul
ture at the University of Arizona and has taught at Princeton University,
the University of Michigan, and Ohio State University. He is coeditor of
Contemporary Debates in Islam: An Anthology of Modernist and Fundamental
ist Thought (with Mansoor Moaddel) and The Poetry of Nizami Ganjavi:
Knowledge, Love, and Rhetoric (with Jerome Clinton), and he has completed
an English translation with Jocelyn Sharlet of Women Without Men by
Shahrnush Parsipur for Syracuse University Press.
Contents
.
Preface
IX
A Note on Translation and Transliteration x1
1. Introduction: Episodic Literary Movement-A Model for
Understanding Literary History
1
2. Persianism: The Ideology of Literary Revolution in
the Early Twentieth Century 19
3. Revolutionary Literature: The Committed Literary Movement in
the Decades Before the 1979 Revolution 66
4. Revolution and Literature: The Rise of the Islamic Literary
Movement after the 1979 Revolution 1o8
5. Feminist Discourse in Postrevolutionary
Women's Literature 135
6. Conclusion: Applicability of Episodic Literary Movement
in Arabic and Turkish Literature 173
Notes 185
Bibliography 219
Index 235

Preface
IN of literary change in Iran and
THIS BOOK I EXPLAIN THE PATTERN
provide an understanding of the formation of modern Persian liter
ary history. I focus on the relationship between the constructive ele
ments of literary creativity, literary movement, ideology, and the
metaphors that modern Persian authors have used to express their ide
ological concerns. I complicate conventional situations of structural
ism by analyzing the effects of historicism on the production and
reception of literary texts in Iran. I suggest that Persian literary history
is not an integrated continuum but a series of distinct episodic move
ments shaped by shifting ideologies of representation. Emerging in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a secular activity, Per
sian literature grasped its own modernity by reencoding past aesthetic
practices in terms of new conceptions of identity and historicity. Since
then-drawing, in part, on concepts of ideology derived from Western
paradigms-modern Persian literature responds to changing social
and political conditions through developing complex strategies of
metaphorical and allegorical representations capable of both con
structing and denouncing cultural continuities.
Thus, I have several objectives: (1) to offer an analytical model for
understanding literary change by defining literary movement, ideol
ogy, and metaphor; (2) to illustrate the connection between literature
and ideology; (3) to analyze the themes and symbolic configurations
of Persian literature and their formative influence on social move
ments, such as the 1979 Iranian Revolution; (4) to identify the ideolog
ical differences between literary products before and after the
Revolution; and (5) to explore how literary changes are due to the im
pact of social movements. I address these issues through the analysis
of selected works of major pre- and postrevolutionary literary figures.
I survey their works according to the author's gender, the date of pub
lication, and their popularity as reflected in the number of printings.
IX
Preface
X
By pointing out the limitations of structuralism, which has dominated
Persian literary criticism, I hope that this theory-driven analysis of the
historical development of contemporary literature will better illustrate
that factors such as class struggle, state politics, and economic de
pendency cannot fully explain the complexity of Iranian historical ex
perience. A thorough historiography must take into account the
seriousness of literary activity in this society.
This book is the revised version of my dissertation which I submit
ted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy (Near Eastern Studies) at the University of Michigan in
1996. I am grateful to Ahmad Karimi Hakkak, Mansoor Moaddel,
Michael Beard, Farzaneh Milani, Mary Muller, James Stewart-Robin
son, Nasrin Rahimieh, and Caryl Emerson, who provided me with
timely comments. I have benefited from the works of these and many
other scholars who have written on different aspects of Iranian and
Middle Eastern studies especially gender and literature. I am also
grateful to Bettie McDavid Mason and Mary Murrell for their intellec
tual seriousness and dedication through the editorial stage of this book.
I am most thankful to my mother who first planted the seed of love for
education and scholarship within me. Without the help, support, and
encouragement provided by my family, Christine and Arjang, this
book would not have been possible. I would also like to thank the Uni
versity of Michigan and Princeton University for the grants that sup
ported my research.
A Note on Translation
and Transliteration
ExcEPT FOR A FEW MODIFICATIONS, I have kept within the bounds
of literal translation, trying to remain as faithful as possible to the orig
inal. The title of every nonprimary source (Persian, Arabic, Turkish,
etc.) is accompanied by a literal English translation of the title the first
time it appears and is only referred to by the translated title thereafter.
If an English translation of any of the works cited exists, a footnote pro
vides its bibliographical information. I have developed this practice
solely to maintain an easy flow within the English text, and it should
not be assumed that an entire English translation of every text exists.
In the few cases where I have benefited from previous translations, the
footnotes also indicate those sources.
In transliterating the names of authors and individuals and the ti
tles of books, short stories, poems, and other writings, I have adopted
the Library of Congress system of transliteration (without the diacrit
ical marks) to provide a more accessible bibliography. Exceptions in
clude names and titles that are directly quoted from other sources and
those terms that have entered common usage, such as Reza Shah and
Tehran. I have used the ending ih instead of ah (for example Ja
malzadih instead of Jamalzadah that is used by the Library of Congress
System of Transliteration) because most modem works have been
transliterated with this spelling in recent years. I have used ' for hamza
and for ayn. Also, in transliterating selected poems and passages, I
c
have modified this system in order to reproduce as closely as possible
the sound of the Persian original.
Xl