The Shahnameh: The Persian Epic as World Literature

Hamid Dabashi

Published by Columbia University Press 2019

The Shahnameh

The Persian Epic as World Literature

Hamid Dabashi

https://doi.org/10.7312/daba18344

Overview
Contents

About this book

Hamid Dabashi insightfully traces the history, authorship, poetic significance, complicated legacy, and enduring significance of the Iranian epic poem the Shahnameh. In addition to explaining what makes it such a distinctive literary work, he makes a powerful case that we need to rethink the notion of “world literature” in light of the Shahnameh.

Author / Editor information

Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. Among his most recent books are The World of Persian Literary Humanism (2015) and Persophilia: Persian Culture on the Global Scene (2016).

Reviews

This enlightening scholarly study will serve, for most Western readers, as their introduction to the Persian Book of Kings. . . . Dabashi provides background on Ferdowsi and the pre-Islamic epic tradition that shaped his poem before sharing colorful accounts of its cast of warrior kings, rebellious offspring, and seductive courtesans.

Brian Edwards, author of After the American Century: The Ends of U.S. Culture in the Middle East:
In The Shahnameh, Hamid Dabashi shows the global importance of the tenth-century Persian masterpiece and gives readers a strong sense of its literary magnificence. Dabashi allows us to see the world imagined by Abolqasem Ferdowsi in its richness and complexity eight centuries before Goethe made his influential claim for Weltliteratur and, thereby, helps us expand our sense of the world of literature. After reading Dabashi’s magisterial account of the great Iranian epic, we must return to the ongoing debates in world literature anew.

Walter Mignolo, coauthor of On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis:
This is a work of love and care on the foundational story telling of the Persianate. Dabashi guides the reader to avoid the traps of the Eurocentered idea of 'world literature.' He invites us to reimagine and rewrite it starting from the Shahanameh instead of from a canonical Western narrative. A powerful political statement that shifts the geography of 'world literature.'

Mahmoud Omidsalar, author of Poetics and Politics of Iran's National Epic, the Shahnameh:
This is an important book that will make its readers reconsider what they think they know about Iran’s national epic. It situates the poem in three contexts: The imperial world in which it was born, the world that it envisions, and the postcolonial world in which it is read and understood. Writing as a learned and passionate critic, Dabashi succeeds in placing the Shahnameh in the corpus of world literature, but somewhere beyond the reach of Eurocentrism. Like Dabashi’s other works, it will stay with its readers, and will open new vistas for the specialist and the nonspecialist alike.

Aravind Adiga, author of The White Tiger:
A major achievement. With wit and erudition, Hamid Dabashi has pushed open one of the great locked doors of world literature: the Shahnameh. In bringing the central work of Persian literature vividly to life, he also offers us a new way to understand all epics. More likely, in Dabashi’s brilliant reading, to undermine imperialistic ambitions than to proclaim them, the Shahnameh and its fellow epic poems reassert their relevance in our troubled times.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor, Columbia University:
This is a work of imaginative activism. Hamid Dabashi coaxes and cajoles the reader to achieve the critical intimacy with the founding epic of Iran that he himself has acquired from childhood and through teaching and parenting. Historically conscientious, he is aware of the abuses of nationalism and triumphalism. His Shahnameh is a metaphysical epic of worthy failure. Such readings open many worlds, shaming the Eurocentric binaries of 'world literature.'

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
PREFACE Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
INTRODUCTION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. THE PERSIAN EPIC Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
2. FERDOWSI THE POET Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
3. THE BOOK OF KINGS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
4. EPICS AND EMPIRES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
5. EMPIRES FALL, NATIONS RISE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
CONCLUSION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;General/trade;

eBook

Published: January 14, 2019
ISBN: 9780231544948