The Politics of Writing in Iran: A History of Modern Persian Literature (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780815628187)

Emerging in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a secular activity, Persian literature acquired its own modernity by redefining past aesthetic practices of identity and history. By analyzing selected work of major pre- and post-revolutionary literary figures, Talattof shows how Persian literary history has not been an integrated continuum but a series of distinct episodic movements shaped by shifting ideologies. Drawing on western concepts, modern Persian literature has responded to changing social and political conditions through complex strategies of metaphorical and allegorical representations that both construct and denounce cultural continuities.

The book provides a unique contribution in that it draws on texts that demonstrate close affinity to such diverse ideologies as modernism, Marxism, feminism, and Islam. Each ideological standard has influenced the form, characterization, and figurative language of literary texts as well as setting the criteria for literary criticism and determining which issues are to be the focus of literary journals.

Author: Kamran Talattof
ISBN-10: 0815628188
ISBN-13: 9780815628187
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Language: English
Published: 05/01/2000
Pages: 254
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.20w x 0.89d

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2000 pg. 177