This book is a selected collection of the scholarly production on Middle and New Persian literature by professor emeritus Bo Utas, Uppsala University, presented to him on his 70th birthday. Out of 19 articles, 15 are in English and four in French. Of special interest is an article entitled ‘‘Genres in Persian literature 900 to 1900’’. Other articles deal with, among other subjects, the influence from Sufism on the Classical Persian poetry, non-religious Book Pahlavi literature, Modern Persian literature, New Persian prosody, and manuscript edition.
This book is a selected collection of the scholarly production on Middle and New Persian literature by professor emeritus Bo Utas, Uppsala University, presented to him on his 70th birthday, with an introduction and an index by Carina Jahani. Out of 19 articles, 15 are in English and four (four entries in Dictionnaire universel des littératures) in French.
Of special interest is a long article entitled ‘‘Genres in Persian literature 900 to 1900’’ which includes a discussion of what literature is, how oral and written literature are defined and how different genres in Persian literature have developed.
The article on New Persian prosody discusses how Arabic and Middle Iranian elements have merged in New Persian poetry. Several articles are dedicated to the influence from Sufism on the Classical Persian poetry, particularly the works of Abdullah Ansari and the Savanih of Ahmad Ghazali. The manuscript tradition and the contents of the ‘‘journey to the other world’’ described in Misbah ul-arvah are he subjects of two separate studies. The traditional attribution of this work to Auhad al-Din Kirmani is also questioned.
There are, furthermore, papers discussing Greco-Persian literary contacts reflected in the Persian romantic epos Vamiq u ‘Azra, the concepts of war and peace in Iran, non-religious Book Pahlavi literature, the aesthetic use of New Persian, and Modern Persian literature, particularly prose literature during the first half of the 20th century. The articles on application of a stemmatic method in Persian manuscript edition and the possibility of using a computerized method for the construction of stemmas are also of particular theoretical interest.
The four entries in ‘‘Dictionnaire universel des littératures’’ are on Farid al-Din Attar, Jalal al-Din Rumi, Sana’i-yi Ghaznavi and Sufism.
„Le présent recueil est une collection de 17 articles (15 publiés entre 1965 et 2009, et 2 articles jusqu’ici inédits) sur la philologie et la linguistique iraniennes; ils portent sur le vieux et le moyen-perse ainsi que le persan (y compris un article sur un fragment judéo-persan ancien), mais surtout sur le développement de la langue persane tout au long des 2500 années de son histoire écrite. Les articles jusqu’ici non publiés (<
> et <>) résument les opinions actuelles de Bo Utas sur la formation du persan, notamment la question de la transition du moyen-perse au persan. Ce volume bien présenté offre un ensemble des articles de Bo Utas fort bienvenu.“
Von: Agnes Korn
In: Abstracta Iranica, volume 34-35-36, 2016, document 8. URL: http://abstractairanica.revues.org/42023
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„Der vorliegende Band ist nicht nur eine Sammlung kleiner Schriften von Bo Utas; er kann vielmehr als eine Einführung in die vielleicht bedeutendste Periode der iranischen Literaturgeschichte vom Ausgang der Sasanidenzeit bis ins 13. Jh. dienen und damit in jene Epoche, in der sich eine islamische kulturelle Identität Irans erstmals formulierte. Die Artikel zeugen von methodischer Strenge und großer philologischer Kenntnis auf der einen, von Gedankenreichtum, Geist und philosophischer Bildung auf der anderen Seite.“
Von: Götz König
In: Orientalistische Literaturzeitung. 108 (2013) 1. S. 51-55.
The series Beiträge zur Iranistik was founded in the 1960s by Georges Redard and subsequently edited by Nicholas Sims-Williams from 1997 to 2020; the present series editor is Agnes Korn.
The series publishes works on the languages of the Iranian branch of Indo-European. The focus is on linguistics, including grammars, dictionaries, text editions, philology as well as diachronic and synchronic studies of linguistic topics. Neighbouring fields such as literature, archaeology and anthropology are likewise represented. The languages of the series are English, German and French. The Beiträge zur Iranistik are represented in libraries internationally and are widely used standard works of Iranian studies.
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