Metaphor and Imagery in Persian Poetry

291 Pages·2011·2.6 MB·English

by  edited by Ali Asghar Seyed-Gohrab

Metaphor and Imagery
in Persian Poetry
Iran Studies
Editorial Board
Ali Gheissari
University of San Diego, CA
Roy P. Mottahedeh
Harvard University
Yann Richard
Sorbonne Nouvelle
Christoph Werner
University of Marburg
VOLUME 6
Metaphor and Imagery
in Persian Poetry
Edited by
Ali Asghar Seyed-Gohrab

LEIDEN • BOSTON
2012
Cover illustration: Combat between Rostam and Sohrab. Courtesy of the Leiden University Library,
Cod.Or. 494, f. 90
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Seyed-Gohrab, A. A. (Ali Asghar), 1968-
 Metaphor and imagery in Persian poetry / edited by Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab.
  p. cm. — (Iran studies, ISSN 1569-7401 ; v. 6)
 Includes index.
 ISBN 978-90-04-21125-4 (hardback : acid-free paper) 
 1. Persian poetry—History and criticism. 2. Imagery (Psychology) in literature. 3. Metaphor in
literature. 4. Poetics—History. I. Title.
 PK6420.I43S49 2011
 891’.51—dc23
2011034528
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters
covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities.
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ISSN 1569-7401
ISBN 978 90 04 21125 4
Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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To Johan ter Haar

CONTENTS
Acknowledgеments  ......................................................................................... ix
Introduction: Persian Rhetorical Figures  .................................................. 1
 A.A. Seyed-Gohrab
Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī and Poetic Imagination in the Arabic and Persian
Philosophical Tradition  ............................................................................. 15
 J. Landau
Kāshifī’s Powerful Metaphor: The Energising Trope  ............................ 67
 Ch. van Ruymbeke
Waxing Eloquent: The Masterful Variations on Candle Metaphors
in the Poetry of Ḥāfijiẓ and his Predecessors  ....................................... 81
 A.A. Seyed-Gohrab
Love and the Metaphors of Wine and Drunkenness in Persian Sufiji
Poetry  .............................................................................................................. 125
 N. Pourjavady
One Chaste Muslim Maiden and a Persian in a Pear Tree:
Analogues of Boccaccio and Chaucer in Four Earlier Arabic and
Persian Tales  ................................................................................................. 137
 F.D. Lewis
Translating Persian Metaphors into English  ........................................... 205
 A. Sedighi
The Ring as a Token in the Barzū-nāma: On the Importance of
Lineage and Origin  ..................................................................................... 215
 G.R. van den Berg
The Function of the Catalogue of Poets in Persian Poetry  ................ 231
 S. Sharma
viii contents
The Origins of the Munāẓara Genre in New Persian
Literature  ....................................................................................................... 249
 F. Abdullaeva
Index  .................................................................................................................... 275
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to the Netherlands Organisation for
Scientifijic Research (NWO) for their generous VENI award (2002–2006),
which resulted in various articles and the book Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic
Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry. I would also like to acknowledge
my gratitude to the Leiden University Fund (LUF), the former Centre for
Non-Western Studies (CNWS) and the Netherlands-Iran Society, for their
fijinancial support for academic meetings on metaphors in the Persian and
Islamic literary traditions.
I would like to express my thankfulness to my friend Sen McGlinn, who
meticulously read many chapters of the manuscript and offfered me many
invaluable editorial suggestions. I am most grateful to my student-assis-
tant Amin Ghodratzadeh, who read the manuscript and made the indis-
pensable index. I am also indebted to the editors of the editorial board
of Iran Studies for their invaluable comments and suggestions, saving me
from many inconsistencies. Finally, I would like to thank Nicolette van
der Hoek, Renee Otto, and Kathy van Vliet-Leigh at Brill for their ceaseless
effforts and encouragements.
Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab