Dr. Meisami discloses previously neglected stylistic qualities and ethical purposes in medieval Persian court poetry, and shows that court poets were also moral instructors who examined and celebrated the values they shared with their audiences. The book also takes into account the close relationship between Persian and Arabic court poetry. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A new translation of the late-tenth-century Persian epic follows its story of pre-Islamic Iran's mythic time of Creation through the seventh-century Arab invasion, tracing ancient Persia's incorporation into an expanding Islamic empire. 15,000 first printing.

One of the very first Persian poets was a woman (Rabe’eh, who lived over a thousand years ago) and there have been women poets writing in Persian in virtually every generation since that time until the present. Before the twentieth century they tended to come from society’s social extremes. Many were princesses, a good number were hired entertainers of one kind or another, and they were active in many different countries – Iran of course, but also India, Afghanistan, and areas of central Asia that are now Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. Not surprisingly, a lot of their poetry sounds like that of their male counterparts, but a lot doesn’t; there are distinctively bawdy and flirtatious poems by medieval women poets, poems from virtually every era in which the poet complains about her husband (sometimes light-heartedly, sometimes with poignant seriousness), touching poems on the death of a child, and many epigrams centered on little details that bring a life from hundreds of years ago vividly before our eyes. This new bilingual edition of The Mirror of My Heart – the poems in Persian and English on facing pages – is a unique and captivating collection introduced and translated by Dick Davis, an acclaimed scholar and translator of Persian literature as well as a gifted poet in his own right. In his introduction he provides fascinating background detail on Persian poetry written by women through the ages, including common themes and motifs and a brief overview of Iranian history showing how women poets have been affected by the changing dynasties. From Rabe’eh in the tenth century to Fatemeh Ekhtesari in the twenty-first, each of the eighty-four poets in this volume is introduced in a short biographical note, while explanatory notes give further insight into the poems themselves.

One Of The Earliest Persian Poets In India, Masud Sad Remains An Important And Influential Poet Across India, Pakistan And Iran. In This First Substantial Critical Study Of The Poets Life And Works, The Author Weaves A Rich Tapestry That Includes Literary Anecdotes, History And Poetry.

Focuses on the poems rather than on their authors. Surveys the development of Persian mystical poetry, dealing first with the relation between Sufism and literature and then with the four main genres of the tradition: the epigram, the homiletic poem, love poetry and symbolic narrative.

Khosrow and Shirin is a love story by Nezami Ganjavi--considered the greatest medieval Persian romance poet--based on historical characters of the seventh-century Iranian court. Written 850 years ago, the narrative poem is presented here for the first time in a stunning modern-verse English translation by Dick Davis, the pre-eminent translator of Persian poetry. The love between an Iranian prince (Khosrow) and an Armenian princess (Shirin) is at the center of this tumultuous tale in which the exigencies of politics and warfare intertwine with no less powerful forces of erotic desire and the quest for personal and spiritual fulfilment. Nezami vividly dramatizes the clash between heroism and sensuality as they are pitted against the desire for the amenities of order and humane civilization. These marvelously presented discordant themes result in a complex love story based on conflicting concepts of love, one regarding the beloved as a prize to be conquered and possessed, the other unrequited and all-consuming, relishing the very notion of the annihilation of the self through love. Davis has captured the energy and poetry of Nezami's original in a delightful, contemporary idiom, and given us a story to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its luminous lyrical mastery. Davis's superb introduction and textual commentary provide insightful background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Davis's translation. Khosrow and Shirin will enchant both the classicist and the general reader, to captivate a new audience for Nezami's masterpiece.

Dick Davis's verse translations of short poems by numerous Persian poets, including Rumi and Hafez.

Integrating forgotten tales of literary communities across Iran, Afghanistan and South Asia - at a time when Islamic empires were fracturing and new state formations were emerging - this book offers a more global understanding of Persian literary culture in the 18th and 19th centuries. It challenges the manner in which Iranian nationalism has infilitrated Persian literary history writing and recovers the multi-regional breadth and vibrancy of a global lingua franca connecting peoples and places across Islamic Eurasia. Focusing on 3 case studies (18th-century Isfahan, a small court in South India and the literary climate of the Anglo-Afghan war), it reveals the literary and cultural ties that bound this world together as well as some of the trends that broke it apart.

This publication and discussion of the fragments of the Greek novel of "M?tiokhos and Parthenop?" and the Persian epic poem based on it, ?Un?ur?'s V?miq and ?Adhr?, adds a new work to the corpus of ancient novels and sheds new light on Persian epic poetry.