Abstract This article discusses use of the meter mutaqārib in Persian masnavī (narrative) poetry as related to its content from a comparative perspective. One of the aims is to demonstrate the various connections between a set of narrative poems composed in mutaqārib. The article questions previous assumptions about the form and style of early Persian verse romances and contributes to further discussion of approaches to Persian narrative poetry.
{"title":"Early Persian Verse Romances in Mutaqārib: Form, Structure, Contents","authors":"Gabrielle van den Berg","doi":"10.1017/irn.2022.39","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2022.39","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article discusses use of the meter mutaqārib in Persian masnavī (narrative) poetry as related to its content from a comparative perspective. One of the aims is to demonstrate the various connections between a set of narrative poems composed in mutaqārib. The article questions previous assumptions about the form and style of early Persian verse romances and contributes to further discussion of approaches to Persian narrative poetry.","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"68 1","pages":"655 - 670"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79555110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dominic Parviz Brookshaw ’ s study of Hafiz and the poets ‘ Ubayd Zakani and Jahan Malak Khatun is a well-researched, insightful, and detailed analysis of how Hafiz relates to these two major colleagues and the extensive culture of Persian literature. Brookshaw approaches the work of Hafiz through discussion of the poet ’ s patrons, his use of genres and motifs, intertextuality with Arabic poetry, perspectives on religious devotion and worldly activities, and his allusions to kings, heroes, prophets, lovers, and locations. Brookshaw observes that in an anthology composed, probably in Shiraz, the home of Hafiz, at around the time the poet died, his poems are included with poems by predecessors and contemporaries. In particular, the book has the same number of poems by Hafiz and the poet Jalal Yazdi, which suggests that Hafiz was well known, and perhaps the anthologist or his patron viewed Hafiz and Jalal as equivalent in some way. Although the present volume focuses on the examination of poems in the broader cultural context of Persian literature, this kind of social context is a welcome contribution, as one sometimes gets the feeling that the poet Hafiz descended from heaven because of the unique position that is traditionally attributed to him. Brookshaw seeks to explain one possible contributor to this: the intense intertextual relationship between Hafiz and the later poet Jami. Brookshaw ’ s strategy for interpretation of these texts, whose variants and layers of meaning sometimes make a clear understanding elusive, is to engage with the recurring question of the order of lines in a sensible way in the introduction, again with recourse to solid research on the social context of Hafiz ’ s poetry. He suggests that the large amount
{"title":"Hafiz and His Contemporaries: Poetry, Performance, and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Iran. Dominic Parviz Brookshaw (London: I. B. Tauris, 2019). Pp. 392. $40.95 paper. ISBN: 978-0755638345","authors":"Jocelyn Sharlet","doi":"10.1017/irn.2022.40","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2022.40","url":null,"abstract":"Dominic Parviz Brookshaw ’ s study of Hafiz and the poets ‘ Ubayd Zakani and Jahan Malak Khatun is a well-researched, insightful, and detailed analysis of how Hafiz relates to these two major colleagues and the extensive culture of Persian literature. Brookshaw approaches the work of Hafiz through discussion of the poet ’ s patrons, his use of genres and motifs, intertextuality with Arabic poetry, perspectives on religious devotion and worldly activities, and his allusions to kings, heroes, prophets, lovers, and locations. Brookshaw observes that in an anthology composed, probably in Shiraz, the home of Hafiz, at around the time the poet died, his poems are included with poems by predecessors and contemporaries. In particular, the book has the same number of poems by Hafiz and the poet Jalal Yazdi, which suggests that Hafiz was well known, and perhaps the anthologist or his patron viewed Hafiz and Jalal as equivalent in some way. Although the present volume focuses on the examination of poems in the broader cultural context of Persian literature, this kind of social context is a welcome contribution, as one sometimes gets the feeling that the poet Hafiz descended from heaven because of the unique position that is traditionally attributed to him. Brookshaw seeks to explain one possible contributor to this: the intense intertextual relationship between Hafiz and the later poet Jami. Brookshaw ’ s strategy for interpretation of these texts, whose variants and layers of meaning sometimes make a clear understanding elusive, is to engage with the recurring question of the order of lines in a sensible way in the introduction, again with recourse to solid research on the social context of Hafiz ’ s poetry. He suggests that the large amount","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"65 1","pages":"191 - 193"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87162364","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This paper aims to investigate the usage and frequency of what we refer to as K-suffixes in Classical New Persian of the ninth to thirteenth centuries, Contemporary Written Persian of the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, and Contemporary Spoken Persian. It shows that K-suffixes are most likely to be the reflexes of earlier evaluative morphemes, traditionally called “diminutives,” and are characterized by a high degree of multifunctionality. While evaluative functions continue to dominate in the Classical New Persian works, they have largely been lost in contemporary spoken Persian, and the suffix is now systematically used to express definiteness. The development of the K-suffix as a definiteness marker in contemporary colloquial Persian appears to be innovative, and is mainly dependent on genre, speaker, and speech situation. Data for Classical New Persian is taken from critical editions of works from the ninth to thirteenth centuries. The data for Contemporary Written Persian comes from comprehensive books of fiction from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, and for Contemporary Spoken Persian from an extensive corpus of spoken Persian narratives and a questionnaire answered by fifteen speakers. The results suggest that evaluative morphology can develop into definiteness marking, with the development passing through a stage of combination with a deictic marker. This paper concludes that the development of definiteness marking can proceed down a new pathway that is different from the one normally assumed for demonstrative-based definite marking, though the endpoint may be similar. The study contributes the second detailed documentation of this process for any Iranian language, and one of the few well-documented cases of a non-demonstrative origin of definiteness marking worldwide.
{"title":"Diachronic Development of the K-suffixes: Evidence from Classical New Persian, Contemporary Written Persian, and Contemporary Spoken Persian","authors":"Maryam Nourzaei","doi":"10.1017/irn.2021.27","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2021.27","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper aims to investigate the usage and frequency of what we refer to as K-suffixes in Classical New Persian of the ninth to thirteenth centuries, Contemporary Written Persian of the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, and Contemporary Spoken Persian. It shows that K-suffixes are most likely to be the reflexes of earlier evaluative morphemes, traditionally called “diminutives,” and are characterized by a high degree of multifunctionality. While evaluative functions continue to dominate in the Classical New Persian works, they have largely been lost in contemporary spoken Persian, and the suffix is now systematically used to express definiteness. The development of the K-suffix as a definiteness marker in contemporary colloquial Persian appears to be innovative, and is mainly dependent on genre, speaker, and speech situation. Data for Classical New Persian is taken from critical editions of works from the ninth to thirteenth centuries. The data for Contemporary Written Persian comes from comprehensive books of fiction from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, and for Contemporary Spoken Persian from an extensive corpus of spoken Persian narratives and a questionnaire answered by fifteen speakers. The results suggest that evaluative morphology can develop into definiteness marking, with the development passing through a stage of combination with a deictic marker. This paper concludes that the development of definiteness marking can proceed down a new pathway that is different from the one normally assumed for demonstrative-based definite marking, though the endpoint may be similar. The study contributes the second detailed documentation of this process for any Iranian language, and one of the few well-documented cases of a non-demonstrative origin of definiteness marking worldwide.","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"55 1","pages":"115 - 160"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88930893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
plenty of original verse material into the text, usually written in Armenian or Persian script rather than in clunky transliteration, and accompanies this material with the due translations. Perhaps as impressive as his navigation of the primary sources is his engagement with the secondary literature in a number of disparate fields, most obviously those of Armenian, Persian, and Turkish literature. He is conversant further afield in Ottoman, Abbasid, and Byzantine studies. Scholars from all of these fields will find this work useful, as will Seljuq and Ilkhanid historians. Those with an interest in popular culture and performance in premodern Anatolia will especially benefit from this study. It is difficult to say that this book is about anything other than Mongol-era Anatolia. We can assume that the input of the editor or other practical considerations led to the sleepier and more Eurocentric “medieval” in the subtitle. Perhaps, though, the Mongol specifier would have been misleading, as the study devotes little space to the broader Eurasian context despite provoking questions in this regard. How, for instance, did Mongol power affect the spread and character of Persian literature in Anatolia? Why was literary Turkish emerging in the region at approximately the same time as the composition of Qipchaq and Uyghur Turkish texts in the neighboring realms of Mamluk Egypt and the Golden Horde? These questions may be best explored in other studies, although one would like to hear the author’s thoughts on the matter. Pifer’s appraisal of a great thirteenth-century Armenian poet summarizes his understanding of the opposing visions of the past that characterize the book: “to understand Kostandin [Erzinkats’i] as a poet, we would do well to place him in dialogue with his contemporaries— and not only Armenians” (174). That Pifer succeeds in doing so is a great feat in itself. He convincingly demonstrates how Anatolian poets used communal and linguistic differences to express their ideas, and thus created works in which contact and even union with the foreign were a persistent theme. Paradoxically, they even used this contact with the foreign to keep their own communal boundaries intact, a fact the author does not attempt to downplay. The literary and historical fields need more juxtapositions such as those offered in this book, and scholars should be trained to skillfully cross civilizational boundaries more often. Only then can they more fully tackle the burning question of what shared cultures are and were, and their relevance to our world today. Pifer’s work is a stimulating and valuable example of what such work looks like.
{"title":"Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran. Lior Sternfeld (California: Stanford University Press, 2020). Pp. 208. $24.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781503613638","authors":"C. Yaghoobi","doi":"10.1017/irn.2022.35","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2022.35","url":null,"abstract":"plenty of original verse material into the text, usually written in Armenian or Persian script rather than in clunky transliteration, and accompanies this material with the due translations. Perhaps as impressive as his navigation of the primary sources is his engagement with the secondary literature in a number of disparate fields, most obviously those of Armenian, Persian, and Turkish literature. He is conversant further afield in Ottoman, Abbasid, and Byzantine studies. Scholars from all of these fields will find this work useful, as will Seljuq and Ilkhanid historians. Those with an interest in popular culture and performance in premodern Anatolia will especially benefit from this study. It is difficult to say that this book is about anything other than Mongol-era Anatolia. We can assume that the input of the editor or other practical considerations led to the sleepier and more Eurocentric “medieval” in the subtitle. Perhaps, though, the Mongol specifier would have been misleading, as the study devotes little space to the broader Eurasian context despite provoking questions in this regard. How, for instance, did Mongol power affect the spread and character of Persian literature in Anatolia? Why was literary Turkish emerging in the region at approximately the same time as the composition of Qipchaq and Uyghur Turkish texts in the neighboring realms of Mamluk Egypt and the Golden Horde? These questions may be best explored in other studies, although one would like to hear the author’s thoughts on the matter. Pifer’s appraisal of a great thirteenth-century Armenian poet summarizes his understanding of the opposing visions of the past that characterize the book: “to understand Kostandin [Erzinkats’i] as a poet, we would do well to place him in dialogue with his contemporaries— and not only Armenians” (174). That Pifer succeeds in doing so is a great feat in itself. He convincingly demonstrates how Anatolian poets used communal and linguistic differences to express their ideas, and thus created works in which contact and even union with the foreign were a persistent theme. Paradoxically, they even used this contact with the foreign to keep their own communal boundaries intact, a fact the author does not attempt to downplay. The literary and historical fields need more juxtapositions such as those offered in this book, and scholars should be trained to skillfully cross civilizational boundaries more often. Only then can they more fully tackle the burning question of what shared cultures are and were, and their relevance to our world today. Pifer’s work is a stimulating and valuable example of what such work looks like.","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"52 1","pages":"195 - 197"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84665560","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
that allusions suggest between Iranian and Islamic culture, between different love stories, and among prophets. Although the Persian ghazal is typically homoerotic, many of the legendary pairs of lovers are in fact heteroerotic, and the allusion to narrative verse romances in Persian in the lyric ghazal entails both contrast and connection between these distinct genres. Among prophets, Joseph plays a significant role in articulating desire for a beloved or a patron, and Brookshaw points out that the written, oral, and aural experience of the ghazal relied on the audience’s knowledge of history, legend, and scripture, just as one who reads or listens to the Qurʾan may draw on knowledge of the stories of the prophets. In conclusion, Brookshaw argues that Hafiz along with his contemporaries Jahan Malak Khatun and ‘Ubayd Zakani disrupted the binaries of erotic roles and mystical and nonmystical interpretation, and intersecting devotion to a beloved, a patron, or the city of Shiraz. Based on his distinction between modern and medieval perspectives, one might believe that such binaries existed in medieval culture but had gained an exaggerated significance in the poet’s contemporary times. Brookshaw’s persuasive response to ongoing debates about interpretation and the thoughtful discussion of selections of poetry by Hafiz and his contemporaries (which are included in the main text in Persian and in translations that are both accurate and pleasant to read) make this book an important contribution to the study of the ghazal in Persian and other languages.
{"title":"Kindred Voices: A Literary History of Medieval Anatolia. Michael Pifer (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021). Pp. 320. $45.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780300250398","authors":"A. Karamustafa","doi":"10.1017/irn.2021.67","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2021.67","url":null,"abstract":"that allusions suggest between Iranian and Islamic culture, between different love stories, and among prophets. Although the Persian ghazal is typically homoerotic, many of the legendary pairs of lovers are in fact heteroerotic, and the allusion to narrative verse romances in Persian in the lyric ghazal entails both contrast and connection between these distinct genres. Among prophets, Joseph plays a significant role in articulating desire for a beloved or a patron, and Brookshaw points out that the written, oral, and aural experience of the ghazal relied on the audience’s knowledge of history, legend, and scripture, just as one who reads or listens to the Qurʾan may draw on knowledge of the stories of the prophets. In conclusion, Brookshaw argues that Hafiz along with his contemporaries Jahan Malak Khatun and ‘Ubayd Zakani disrupted the binaries of erotic roles and mystical and nonmystical interpretation, and intersecting devotion to a beloved, a patron, or the city of Shiraz. Based on his distinction between modern and medieval perspectives, one might believe that such binaries existed in medieval culture but had gained an exaggerated significance in the poet’s contemporary times. Brookshaw’s persuasive response to ongoing debates about interpretation and the thoughtful discussion of selections of poetry by Hafiz and his contemporaries (which are included in the main text in Persian and in translations that are both accurate and pleasant to read) make this book an important contribution to the study of the ghazal in Persian and other languages.","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"27 1","pages":"193 - 195"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72539739","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Call to Arms: Iran's Marxist Revolutionaries; Formation and Evolution of the Fadaʾis, 1964–1976. Ali Rahnema (London: OneWorld Academic, 2021). Pp. 528. $45.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781786079855","authors":"R. Abdul Razak","doi":"10.1017/irn.2021.23","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2021.23","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"56 1","pages":"197 - 200"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79697173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Mathematics is a particularly important challenge for embodied approaches to cognition, as it is probably the most abstract domain of human knowledge. Humans use metaphors in all aspects of life. This paper studies the effects of human body parts on numerals, numeral systems, and mensural and sortal classifiers. The evidence for this paper comes from the Tāti language group, an endangered Iranian language of the Indo-European language family. The Tāti data shows these languages make use of base-10, base-20, and base-50 numeral systems, some of which are among the most common and earliest counting systems worldwide, while the last is unique and peculiar to the area. Body parts may also play an important role in forming mensural and sortal classifiers, as is the case in the Tāti language group.
{"title":"The Metaphorical Use of Body Parts in Forming Counting expressions: Evidence from Tāti Language Group","authors":"Jahandust Sabzalipur, R. Izadifar","doi":"10.1017/irn.2022.41","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2022.41","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Mathematics is a particularly important challenge for embodied approaches to cognition, as it is probably the most abstract domain of human knowledge. Humans use metaphors in all aspects of life. This paper studies the effects of human body parts on numerals, numeral systems, and mensural and sortal classifiers. The evidence for this paper comes from the Tāti language group, an endangered Iranian language of the Indo-European language family. The Tāti data shows these languages make use of base-10, base-20, and base-50 numeral systems, some of which are among the most common and earliest counting systems worldwide, while the last is unique and peculiar to the area. Body parts may also play an important role in forming mensural and sortal classifiers, as is the case in the Tāti language group.","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"81 1","pages":"1025 - 1043"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75919590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Writing in the early 1990s, Bill Nichols observed the ascent of Iranian cinema to the global stage in his landmark article, “Discovering Form, Inferring Meaning: New Cinemas and the Film Festival Circuit” (1994). For a theorist like Nichols, the global rise of Iranian cinema was merely an excuse to reflect on the processes by which international audiences make sense of “new” cinemas, especially when they are discovered, venerated, and made accessible by systems of global distribution like film festivals. Nevertheless, the article has become important to the study of Iranian filmmaking by capturing the moment at which Iranian cinema joined the ranks of world cinema: the darling of international film festivals and a mainstay on university syllabi. At the core of the article are important questions about how Iranian filmmakers have embedded meanings into their films. Nichols proposes that certain universal forms, including allegorical and poetic styles, offer an entry point for global viewers as they wade through strange sights and sounds and seek out those deeper messages teeming beneath the plot. Although Michelle Langford’s Allegory in Iranian Cinema: The Aesthetics of Poetry and Resistance does not directly reference Nichols’s article, in many respects it picks up where Nichols leaves off. Langford begins her book by explaining that she was “seduced” by Iranian art house films in the 1990s when they “began making their way to international film festivals.” She writes, “I couldn’t help but feel that they were calling me to engage with them more deeply” (1). Perhaps unknowingly, she replicates the central concerns of Nichols’s article by asking how Iranian films attract and sustain global viewership through the promise of hidden meanings. In his article, Nichols suggests that festival audiences make sense of Iranian cinema by capitalizing on their knowledge of the formal strategies of filmmaking to recuperate “the strange as familiar.” This understanding of Iranian films is, according to Nichols, necessarily partial, like that of a “satisfied tourist.” He writes that lurking “at the boundaries of the film festival experience . . . are those deep structures and thick descriptions that might restore a sense of the particular and local to what we have now recruited to the realm of the global.” In what could be a direct response to Nichols’s observation, Langford’s eloquent and thoughtful book supplies expert knowledge as the author analyzes an allegorical tradition that has become synonymous with Iranian cinema since its explosion on the international scene. Combining fine-grained analyses of specific films with a wealth of historical and political context, Allegory in Iranian Cinema is a welcome addition to Iranian film studies—a field that has grown mightily since Nichols first observed the budding presence of Iranian movies at international film festivals nearly three decades ago.
{"title":"Allegory in Iranian Cinema: The Aesthetics of Poetry and Resistance. Michelle Langford (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). Pp. xiv, 278 (hardcover). ISBN 9781780762982","authors":"Blake Atwood","doi":"10.1017/irn.2022.28","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2022.28","url":null,"abstract":"Writing in the early 1990s, Bill Nichols observed the ascent of Iranian cinema to the global stage in his landmark article, “Discovering Form, Inferring Meaning: New Cinemas and the Film Festival Circuit” (1994). For a theorist like Nichols, the global rise of Iranian cinema was merely an excuse to reflect on the processes by which international audiences make sense of “new” cinemas, especially when they are discovered, venerated, and made accessible by systems of global distribution like film festivals. Nevertheless, the article has become important to the study of Iranian filmmaking by capturing the moment at which Iranian cinema joined the ranks of world cinema: the darling of international film festivals and a mainstay on university syllabi. At the core of the article are important questions about how Iranian filmmakers have embedded meanings into their films. Nichols proposes that certain universal forms, including allegorical and poetic styles, offer an entry point for global viewers as they wade through strange sights and sounds and seek out those deeper messages teeming beneath the plot. Although Michelle Langford’s Allegory in Iranian Cinema: The Aesthetics of Poetry and Resistance does not directly reference Nichols’s article, in many respects it picks up where Nichols leaves off. Langford begins her book by explaining that she was “seduced” by Iranian art house films in the 1990s when they “began making their way to international film festivals.” She writes, “I couldn’t help but feel that they were calling me to engage with them more deeply” (1). Perhaps unknowingly, she replicates the central concerns of Nichols’s article by asking how Iranian films attract and sustain global viewership through the promise of hidden meanings. In his article, Nichols suggests that festival audiences make sense of Iranian cinema by capitalizing on their knowledge of the formal strategies of filmmaking to recuperate “the strange as familiar.” This understanding of Iranian films is, according to Nichols, necessarily partial, like that of a “satisfied tourist.” He writes that lurking “at the boundaries of the film festival experience . . . are those deep structures and thick descriptions that might restore a sense of the particular and local to what we have now recruited to the realm of the global.” In what could be a direct response to Nichols’s observation, Langford’s eloquent and thoughtful book supplies expert knowledge as the author analyzes an allegorical tradition that has become synonymous with Iranian cinema since its explosion on the international scene. Combining fine-grained analyses of specific films with a wealth of historical and political context, Allegory in Iranian Cinema is a welcome addition to Iranian film studies—a field that has grown mightily since Nichols first observed the budding presence of Iranian movies at international film festivals nearly three decades ago.","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"3 1","pages":"1096 - 1098"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84886378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Afghanistan is one of the few places where the category of bachah—the beardless young male—has maintained its aesthetic and erotic aspects in the public imagination. This article provides an introduction to the history of the various arrangements of man-bachah relationships in Afghanistan from the rise of the Afghan kingdom in the late eighteenth century. By looking at both primary and secondary sources, alongside ethnographic materials gathered during fieldwork in Afghanistan between 2016 and 2021, this article shows how the content and implications of the category of bachah have been in constant flux and intimately connected to wider social, political, and economic developments both inside the country and beyond.
{"title":"The Afghan Bachah and its Discontents: An Introductory History","authors":"Ali Abdi","doi":"10.1017/irn.2022.42","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2022.42","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Afghanistan is one of the few places where the category of bachah—the beardless young male—has maintained its aesthetic and erotic aspects in the public imagination. This article provides an introduction to the history of the various arrangements of man-bachah relationships in Afghanistan from the rise of the Afghan kingdom in the late eighteenth century. By looking at both primary and secondary sources, alongside ethnographic materials gathered during fieldwork in Afghanistan between 2016 and 2021, this article shows how the content and implications of the category of bachah have been in constant flux and intimately connected to wider social, political, and economic developments both inside the country and beyond.","PeriodicalId":46025,"journal":{"name":"Iranian Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":"161 - 180"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86883201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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