Comparatively studies, through both form and content, the development of Arabic and Persian modernist poetry during the mid-twentieth century.

Re-orienting Modernism in Arabic and Persian Poetry is the first book to systematically study the parallel development of modernist poetry in Arabic and Persian. It presents a fresh line of comparative inquiry into minor literatures within the field of world literary studies. Focusing on Arabic-Persian literary exchanges allows readers to better understand the development of modernist poetry in both traditions and in turn challenge Europe's position at the center of literary modernism. The argument contributes to current scholarly efforts to globalize modernist studies by reading Arabic and Persian poetry comparatively within the context of the Cold War to establish the Middle East as a significant participant in wider modernist developments. To illuminate profound connections between Arabic and Persian modernist poetry in both form and content, the book takes up works from key poets including the Iraqis Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati and the Iranians Nima Yushij, Ahmad Shamlu, and Forough Farrokhzad.

This dissertation critically investigates the transnational movements that shaped the making of modernist poetry in Iraq and Iran. Following a brief introduction to the project's historical and critical framework, the first chapter provides the dissertation's theoretical foundation. It thus engages conversations about literary commitment, the transnational dimension of literary development, and world literature to situate these two poetries as integral to the broader modernist movement. Chapter Two examines the poetry of Ni ma Yu shi j, the founder of Persian modernist poetry, and the foundational position of premodern Arabic prosody for Persian poetic form. It highlights how Ni ma 's innovations on Arabic prosody presage the birth of the Iraqi free verse movement. Chapter Three moves on to discuss the work of Iraqi poet Badr Sha kir al-Sayya b, addressing how his pioneering project of poetic modernism changed in light of his political alignments. It demonstrates how his experience of the 1953 coup against Mosaddegh in Iran forced him to reconsider his Communist affiliations and discerns the effects his changing political outlook had on how he presented his poetry for posterity. Ah mad Sha mlu and Furu gh Farrukhza d, two poets who took up Ni ma 's modernist vision in Iran, are the subjects of Chapter Four, which tackles their continued development of Arabic prosody in Persian and ultimate break with the formal constraints Ni ma had continued to adhere to. It also considers Sha mlu 's and Farrukhza d's contrasting poetics of death in terms of their transnational poetic engagements. The final chapter turns to examine the Iraqi poet Abd al-Wahha b al-Baya ti 's poetics of revolution--which combines existentialism, Sufism, and political commitment--to show how al-Baya ti 's use of the poetic masks of Umar al-Khayya m and the martyred Sufi Mans u r al-H alla j works in transnational dialog with the Persian poetic and mystical traditions. By taking the Arabic modernist tradition as its focal point and putting Arabic poetry in conversation with modernist poetry in Persian, this study sheds light on how modernism functions as a planetary movement and calls for a reconsideration of current models for transnational literary analysis, reorienting modernist studies away from vertical approaches to lateral ones that consider minor modernist traditions on their own terms.

Confronting nationalistic and nativist interpreting practices in Persianate literary scholarship, Persian Literature as World Literature makes a case for reading these literatures as world literature-as transnational, worldly texts that expand beyond local and national penchants. Working through an idea of world literature that is both cosmopolitan and critical of any monologic view on globalization, the contributors to this volume revisit the early and contemporary circulation of Persianate literatures across neighboring and distant cultures, and seek innovative ways of developing a transnational Persian literary studies, engaging in constructive dialogues with the global forces surrounding, and shaping, Persianate societies and cultures.

An analysis of the aesthetic, cultural and political aspects of alternative poetic movements and individual poets in three periods: the Constitutional Revolution (1900–1920), the post-constitutional era (1920–1940), and the ascendency of modernism (1940–1960). Farshad Sonboldel shines new light on the history of modern Persian poetry by re-imagining the roles that the aesthetic experimentations of alternative poets played in different phases of the literary revolution in modern Persian poetry. Dominant narratives portray modern Persian poetry as a gradual, rational, and moderate change in the classical regime of aesthetics as well as a response to – and reflection of – cultural and socio-political changes within Iranian society. They also disregard the significance of radical experiments by alternative poets and undervalue the part they played in the initiation and progress of the so-called "literary revolution." These mainstream narratives minimize the socio-political engagement of literary works with the direct reflection of the social reality, and thus neglect the way many alternative poems struggle with socio-political issues through deconstructing the old and constructing new aesthetic systems. Each chapter of The Rebellion of Forms in Modern Persian Poetry is centred around poems chosen for their potential to showcase notable experiments of pioneer movements and individuals in each given period. Examining the formal and thematic aspects of these poems, this book reformulates the story of modern Persian poetry and unravels the relationship between radical aesthetic changes in the practice of poetry and resistance against political and cultural domination in society.

From the ninth to the nineteenth centuries, Persian was the pre-eminent language of learning far beyond Iran, stretching from the Balkans to China. In this book, Alexander Jabbari explores what became of this vast Persian literary heritage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Iran and South Asia, as nationalism took hold and the Persianate world fractured into nation-states. He shows how Iranians and South Asians drew from their shared past to produce a 'Persianate modernity', and create a modern genre, literary history. Drawing from both Persian and Urdu sources, Jabbari reveals the important role that South Asian Muslims played in developing Iranian intellectual and literary trends. Highlighting cultural exchange in the region, and the agency of Asian modernizers, Jabbari charts a new way forward for area studies and opens exciting possibilities for thinking about language and literature.

Translation-related activities from and into Arabic have significantly increased in the last few years, in both scope and scale. The launch of a number of national translation projects, policies and awards in a number of Arab countries, together with the increasing translation from Arabic in a wide range of subject areas outside the Arab World – especially in the aftermath of the Arab Spring – have complicated and diversified the dynamics of the translation industry involving Arabic. The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Translation seeks to explicate Arabic translation practice, pedagogy and scholarship, with the aim of producing a state-of-the-art reference book that maps out these areas and meets the pedagogical and research needs of advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as active researchers.

This book is a radical reimagination of the idea of the literary through colonial histories and world literature.

This book engages with Naipaul's literary corpus and reconceptualizes what it means to be a writer of world literature.

Interweaving the influential voices of African, Caribbean, and Latinx authors, this book challenges eurocentric notions of World Literature.