The impact of Persian literature on world culture and literature is undeniable. Persian poets such as Firdowsi, Sa’di, Hafiz, Rumi and Khayyam who deal with universal themes beyond a particular place and time are among the most widely-known literary figures of the world; their works are translated into different languages. Despite the fact that there are different translations of Persian literature in English, it is still not clear whether Persian literature has gained its appropriate place in (...) the world. We study the reception of Persian literature in general and classical Persian poetry in particular in Britain and The United States to see whether it is rightly introduced to these countries or not. A close study of the reception of Persian poetry in Anglophone world in general and in Britain and The United States in particular reveals that while Persian literature is introduced and taught in these countries, it is still far from being truly known there. Those who have been familiar with Persian literature have mainly known it through translations by western scholars, and this has led to problems and misconceptions. As Edward Said argues in Orientalism, the orient is never truly depicted by the west. The best way would be to have Persian scholars of English literature translate Persian works into English. (shrink)

In the 6th century, Paul the Persian used his own pen to write a summary of Aristotle's Peri Hermeneias in the Persian language. Severus Sebokht translated it into Syriac. This book is a transcription and translation of the Syriac manuscript of Paul the Persian's Peri Hermeneias and a comparison of it with Aristotle's original Greek text.

Born in 1315, Shamseddin Mohammad, known as Hafiz, grew up in the city of Shiraz where he studied the Qur’anic sciences. In his youth he learned the Quran rigorously and assumed the epithet ‘Hafiz’ which means the one who knows the Quran by heart. Also known as the ‘Tongue of the Hidden’ and the ‘Interpreter of Secrets’, Hafiz utilizes grand religious ideas and mingles them with Sufistic teachings, thereby creating a kind of poetry which baffles interpretation. The poetry of Hafiz (...) has intoxicated and continues to intoxicate many in the world. The exhilarating effect of his poetry was also known to the poet himself. In one of his poems, he says that the angels are memorizing his poems in heaven and that Venus is enraptured and that Christ rjoices in his songs: “What marvel that in heaven are sung/ The dulcet words by HAFIZ strung?/Or that, by Venus’s air entranced,/Messiah in his sphere has danced?” As Friedrich Nietzsche has said of Hafiz: “Bist aller Trunkenen Trunkenheit/ wozu, wozu dir-Wein? (the intoxication of all intoication you are/what need do you have to ask for wine?)”. (shrink)

This study was a Persian-English comparative translation investigation on the selected poems of Forough- Farrokhzad, an influential contemporary Iranian poet. Two English translations were analyzed: one by a native Persian speaker, Sholeh Wolpé, an Iranian poet and translator, and the other by a non-native Persian speaker, Jascha Kessler, an American poet, writer and translator. The translations were reviewed according to Vinay and Darbelnet’s(1995) model which identifies two general translation strategies: direct and oblique, resembling literal (...) versus free classifications, respectively, along with their supplementary proce- dures in order to investigate the frequency of the application of each procedure by the two translators. After situating every line of the poems in the related categories, the number of times each procedure was em- ployed was examined. The findings indicated that both translators used the oblique strategy more than the direct one. The non-native translator, however, used the oblique strategy considerably more frequently com- pared to the native translator. Finally, new procedures called complementary procedures were proposed by the researchers to be added to Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1995) model in order to fill the gaps in the application of strategies and procedures to the poems of Forough Farrokhzad and probably other poems. (shrink)

Aristotle’s claim that poetry is ‘a more philosophic and better thing’ than history (Poet 9.1451b5-6) and his description of the ‘poetic universal’ have been the source of much scholarly discussion. Although many scholars have mined Poetics 9 as a source for Aristotle’s views towards history, in my contribution I caution against doing so. Critics of Aristotle’s remarks have often failed to appreciate the expository principle which governs Poetics 6-12, which begins with a definition of tragedy and then elucidates the (...) terms of that definition by means of a series of juxtapositions. The juxtaposition between poetry and history is one such instance which seeks to elucidate what sort of plot exemplifies a causal unity such that the events of a play unfold with likelihood or necessity. Within that context, Aristotle compares history and poetry in order to elucidate the object of poetic mimesis rather than criticize history as a discipline. Viewing Aristotle as antagonistic towards history fails to appreciate the expository structure of the Poetics and obscures the resource which history provides to the poet, a point which I explore by considering what Aristotle would have thought of an ‘historical’ tragedy like Aeschylus’ Persians. (shrink)

This article examines the influence of the Persian mystic poet Hafi z on western poets. Interest in Hafiz started in England in the eighteenth century with the translations of Sir William Jones. In the nineteenth century, the German translation of Baron von HammerPurgstall inspired Goethe to create his masterpiece Westöstliche Divan (West-Eastern Divan). The poetry of Hafiz evoked such passion in Goethe that he referred to him as ‘Saint Hafiz’ and ‘Celestial Friend’. Inspired by Westöstliche Divan, a number (...) of German poets including Rückert and Platen composed volumes of poetry on the model of ghazal, the popular poetic form perfected by Hafi z in Persian literature. Prominent among the German thinkers influenced and fascinated by Hafiz was Friedrich Nietzsche who repeatedly mentioned him in his works. The influence of Hafiz stretched to America in 1838 when Ralph Waldo Emerson read Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan. In Hafiz, Emerson found a man who derived pleasure in the very elements which others found mean. Under the influence of Hafiz’s Saki-nameh or the Book of Wine, he created his finest poem Bacchus which, according to Harold Bloom, set the terms for the dialectic of American poetry. (shrink)

Immediately upon the death of Plato in 347 BCE, philosophers in the Academy began to circulate stories involving his encounters with wisdom practitioners from Persia. This article examines the history of Greek perceptions of Persian wisdom and argues that the presence of foreign wisdom practitioners in the history of Greek philosophy has been undervalued since Diogenes Laertius.

Persian translation by Seyyed Mostafa Mousavi A’zam of 'The Immortality Requirement for Life's Meaning' (Ratio 2003).

Persian translation by Mohsen Javadi of 'Recent Work on the Meaning of Life' (first published in Ethics 2002).

Persian translation by Mohammad Saeedi of 'Could God's Purpose Be the Source of Life's Meaning?' (first published in Religious Studies 2000).

With regard to the importance of interrelations and interplays of topos and logos in ancient theory and practices, here I will appropriate Aristotle philosophizing of topos and logos and apply it for the ancient persian Empire as reflected in related inscriptions.

Notwithstanding its value as the earliest extant New Persian treatment of the art of rhetoric, Rādūyānī’s Interpreter of Rhetoric (Tarjumān al-Balāgha) has yet to be read from the vantage point of comparative poetics. Composed in the Ferghana region of modern Central Asia between the end of the eleventh century and the beginning of the twelfth century, Rādūyānī’s vernacularization of classical Arabic norms inaugurated literary theory in the New Persian language. I argue here that Rādūyānī’s vernacularization is most consequential (...) with respect to its transformation of the classical Arabic tropes of metaphor (istiʿāra) and comparison (tashbīh) to suit the new exigencies of a New Persian literary culture. In reversing the relation between metaphor and comparison enshrined in Arabic aesthetics, Rādūyānī concretized the Persian contribution to the global study of literary form. -/- . (shrink)

This article proposes a role for aesthetic judgment in our practical thought. The role is related to those moments when practical reason seems to give out, when it fails to yield a judgment about what to do in the face of a choice we cannot avoid. I argue that these impasses require agents to create, but that not any creativity will do. For we cannot regard a response to one of these problems as arbitrary or capricious if we want to (...) act on it. We must instead regard that response as justified by the problem itself. I suggest that this combination of creativity and normativity is characteristic of aesthetic judgment and this makes it a promising candidate for making these very difficult choices. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger defines the world as ‘the ever non-objective to which we are subject as long as the paths of birth and death . . . keep us transported into Being’. He writes that the world is ‘not the mere collection of the countable or uncountable, familiar and unfamiliar things that are at hand . . . The world worlds’. Being able to fully and richly express how the world worlds is the task of the artist, whose artwork is the (...) crystallization of this ‘worlding’. For Heidegger it is especially the poet who is attuned to this ‘worlding’, for the poet’s work is focussed on and happens within language itself. The poet is a ‘world-maker’, but this ‘worlding’ is not directed at creating a fictional world; rather it is aimed at revealing the world itself, drawing to the foreground the ‘ever non-objective’ nature of the world, the world happening and unfolding through and with us. This paper, using T.S. Eliot’s poetry, particularly Four Quartets as an example, will delve into how the language of the poet is able to articulate this seemingly invisible boundary between the everyday world and that same world revealed as a mysterious potential that ‘worlds’. The ‘religious imagination’ is central in how this transformation of reality, through poetic language, can manifest. Paul Ricoeur’s work on the poetic and religious dimensions of imagination, particularly the notion of ‘hope’ provides the theoretical underpinnings to explain this transformation. (shrink)

The study discusses the correct name of one of Abd al-Abbas Iranshahri's books. The book is based on Bayan al-Adyan (بیان‌الادیان) authored by Abolma’ali Mohammad Balkhi, which has been called "Hastishenasi". Looking on the different meanings and interpretations of "Hasti" in Persian language and culture and the understanding of early scholars of Islam, the real name of the book seems to be "Hasti-Dad". It is emphasized in the study on the importance of Iranian's due attention to Persian and (...) that many intellectuals found it necessary to have a heavenly book in Persian to explain and interpret the principles of Iran's historical and mythological beliefs. So, those who did not want a religion other than Islam in Iran, translated Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, into Persian in the Samanid period. (shrink)

In Book 3 of Herodotus’Histories, seven Persian noblemen discuss which form of government would best fit the empire. If we accept its dramatic date, 522 BCE, this scene offers the first example of a comparative definition of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy. It offers, even more strikingly, the very first description of the government of the many — a novel political order that will eventually be called a democracy. The power of the people, this quintessentially Hellenic thing, was then a (...) Persian invention, an idea that occurred originally not to the masses of a polis, not to an Athenian demagogue, but to a relative of the Great King. In the course of the narrative, democracy will prove to be a unique form of government: the winning one. The Histories take up the challenge of recounting, and accounting for, a most improbable defeat, and for an even less foreseeable victory. The text does so not by preaching a morality of self-knowledge and self-control, but by exposing the realistic effects of different kinds of rule. Against the odds, democracy enhances and strengthens a small polis, Athens, making it grand and successful. Notwithstanding its immeasurable capabilities, the Persian monarchy fails. The turning point is the battle of Salamis, a prowess of the dêmos. A theatrical pause, in the narration of how the Great Kings came to prepare their campaigns against Greece, the debate offers a counterfactual explanation to historical events, in terms of political theory. This is, I will argue, the effect of the scene on the Histories. (shrink)

Aeschylus’ Persians dramatically represents the Athenian victory at Salamis from the perspective of the Persian royal court at Susa. Although the play is in some sense a patriotic celebration of the Athenian victory and its democracy, nonetheless in both form and function it is a tragedy that generates sympathy for the suffering of its main character, Xerxes. Although scholars have argued whether the play is primarily patriotic or tragic, I argue that the play purposively provides both patriotic and tragic (...) elements in such a fashion as to invite its audience to reflect on the ramifications of Persia’s failed empire for Athens’ own nascent Delian League, which even in 472 was showing imperialistic tendencies. I argue that Aeschylus’ political theory in Persians is aporetic in the sense that its careful balance between patriotism and anti-imperialism generates an impasse which members of the play’s audience are thus given the occasion to puzzle over. (shrink)

CRITICAL THINKING AND PEDAGOGICAL LICENSE https://www.academia.edu/9273154/CRITICAL_THINKING_AND_PEDAGOGICAL_LICENSE JOHN CORCORAN.1999. Critical thinking and pedagogical license. Manuscrito XXII, 109–116. Persian translation by Hassan Masoud. Please post your suggestions for corrections and alternative translations. -/- Critical thinking involves deliberate application of tests and standards to beliefs per se and to methods used to arrive at beliefs. Pedagogical license is authorization accorded to teachers permitting them to use otherwise illicit means in order to achieve pedagogical goals. Pedagogical license is thus analogous to poetic license (...) or, more generally, to artistic license. Pedagogical license will be found to be pervasive in college teaching. This presentation suggests that critical thinking courses emphasize two topics: first, the nature and usefulness of critical thinking; second, the nature and pervasiveness of pedagogical license. Awareness of pedagogical license alerts the student to the need for critical thinking. (shrink)

Building on the multivalent meanings of the Arabo- Persian tarjama (‘to interpret’, ‘to translate’, ‘to narrate’), this essay argues for the relevance of Qur’ānic inimitability (i'jāz) to contemporary translation theory. I examine how the translation of Arabic rhetorical theory ('ilm al-balāgha) into Persian inaugurated new trends within the study of literary meaning. Finally, I show how Islamic aesthetics conceptualizes the translatability of literary texts along lines kindred to Walter Benjamin. -/- .

Kripke in his famous book on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy argues, on behalf of Wittgenstein, that there can be no fact of the matter as to what a speaker means by her words, that is, no fact that can meet the Constitution Demand and the Normativity Demand. He particularly argues against the dispositional view, according to which meaning facts are constituted by facts about the speaker's dispositions to respond in a certain way on certain occasions. He argues that facts about dispositions (...) are finite and are incapable of constituting facts about what speakers mean by their words; they are also essentially descriptive, not prescriptive and thus, cannot meet the Normativity Demand. Hannah Ginsborg, one of the most important contemporary philosophers of language, has recently attempted to resist Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s arguments against by defending a new sort of reductive dispositionalism which can meet both demands at the same time. In this paper, I will argue that she would not be successful in her project. (shrink)

al-Zuhd, one of the most prominent themes in the Arab poetry in the Abbasid period, came to the summit by the poets like Abū l-ʻAtāhiyya and Abū Nuwās. Another important poem known with his poems on al-Zuhd is Mahmud al-Warraq. Warrak, after a youth life in pleasure, understood the s of life and apply himself to poetry on zuhd. Warrak produced a number of different works in verse form. He was distinguished by the sincerity in his statements and the simple (...) language he used. He had thought that he was deceived by worldly gifts and pleasures in his youth and thus tried in his poems to guide young people with a sense of responsibility not to fall in same mistakes. This paper will examine Warraq emphasis on “youth un in his Diwan. Poems will be discussed in the context of the nature and the fate of youth. In the introduction, the development of poetry tradition on al-zuhd in the period of Umayyads and Abbasids will be mentioned briefly. Afterwards, poems About youth in his diwan will be researched. (shrink)

Machiavelli’s work is a commentary on the power politics that frame Shakespeare’s tragedies and histories, and Shakespeare’s villains bring to life the inherent dangerousness of Machiavelli’s philosophy. Because their writings appear to illuminate each other in this way, because they constantly remind us of each other, several questions arise: what did Shakespeare know about Machiavelli? What did he think of Machiavelli’s philosophy as it’s normally construed, that is, as a kind of completely unscrupulous political realism? To what extent had the (...) figure of the Machiavel already been articulated within the Elizabethan literary world when Shakespeare got a hold of it? Was the Tutor sense of Machiavelli’s thought accurate? If not, what was the pervasive sense of Machiavelli in Shakespeare’s culture? (shrink)

واکاوی ضدواقع‌گرایی و رهیافت تحقیق‌گرایانة مایکل دامت .

بررسی استدلال و پاسخ شک‌گرایانة کریپکی و برخی از واکنش‌ها به آن .

بررسی اصلی‌ترین چالش‌های میان دامت و مک داول در باب نظریة معنا و توصیف مناسب رفتار زبانی .

نگاهی بر استدلال‌های دونالد دیویدسون در باب ضرورت زبان برای اندیشه .

روش‌شناسی دیویدسون در باب معنا و تعبیر رادیکال و انتقادات دامت به آن .

«بررسی استدلال دیویدسون در باب ترکیبی بودن زبان‌های طبیعی و «استدلال قلاب سنگی .

نگاهی به تفسیر و انتقادات دامت از آموزه‌های فرگه پیرامون مباحث معناشناختی .

In this paper, I will argue against certain criticisms of Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s sceptical argument and sceptical solution, made especially by Baker and Hacker, McGinn, and McDowell. I will show that their interpretation of Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s view is misplaced. According to Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s sceptical argument, there is no fact as to what someone means by her words. For Kripke, this conclusion, combined with Classical Realist view of meaning, leads to the Wittgensteinian paradox, according to which there is no such thing as (...) meaning anything by any word. Wittgenstein presents this paradox in paragraph 201 of the Philosophical Investigations. As Kripke reads Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein is in agreement with his sceptic on the sceptical conclusion of the sceptical argument, that is, that there is no fact about meaning, and builds his sceptical solution on an endorsement of that. McDowell, McGinn, and others have objected that Kripke has failed to properly understand Wittgenstein’s main remarks in 201, that is, that the paradox is the result of a misunderstanding of the ordinary notion of meaning. Wittgenstein does not accept such a sceptical conclusion. I will use the distinction George Wilson draws between two different conclusions of the sceptical argument and show that Kripke has respected all of the remarks that Wittgenstein has put in section 201. (shrink)

Professor Puran Singh, a unique synthesis of a poet, philosopher and scientist, rose like a celestial star on the firmament of modern Indian literature. The many splendored personality of this great chemist, mystic poet, visionary and interpreter of the Sikh cultural consciousness still beckons scholars to explore the extent of his vision in various fields. After a splendid in-depth study of the Life and Work of Puran Singh, Dr. Hardev Singh Virk has made a successful attempt to unravel (...) the persona of this multi-dimensional genius in his book titled 'Professor Puran Singh - Scientist, Poet and Philosopher.' The book is an anthology of 11 essays - 7 in English and 4 in Punjabi. In the 'Introduction to the book, the author traces a brief history of the kindling of his interest in the 'Life and Works of Puran Singh.' Then he articulates the purpose of the book to elaborate the ideas of this eminent scholar through different mediums to reach a wider audience. Dr. Virk stresses that poetic and other literary works of Puran Singh are of International standards and worth a Nobel Prize in literature. Still, sadly these works have not been adequately projected at the world forum. (shrink)

From an observation by the poet Paul Valéry, I argue that rhyme schemes, while constraining, also enable the poet to achieve autonomy from various surrounding influences, such as the domestic and the political. The demand to keep to the rhyme scheme takes priority, reducing the likelihood of these dominating.

The affection of the Prophet by the ummah (belivers) contributed to keep his words on the agenda so that various formations had emerged. these formations displayed themselves especially in the field of literature. Specifically, variety in the forty hadith literature can be example of this. New‘î who was the literary man and professor of Ottoman’s in the 16. Century and produced the Works of İslamic Science and literature. In this study, the work of New‘î which is about the forty hadith (...) written in poetic has diffused and it is tried to give information about the index of that work. Also, translations and the classic sources of the hadith which given in the work are shown in tabuler form. In addition to this, the author and his Works have tried to explain with some previously unknown topics. Lastly, it has been tried to correct misplaced issues. (shrink)

"Then to this earthen Bowl did I adjourn My Lip the secret Well of Life to learn: And Lip to Lip it murmur'd-"While you live Drink!-for once dead you never shall return." " [http://philpapers.org/profile/112741] .

Asaf Halet Çelebi, who is a poet interested in Eastern religions. This is due to reach the family atmosphere, the love to know different languages and mysticism. What makes him different aspects of Turkish literature, the history of religions is the masterful use of motifs in his poems. Religions, mythology, mysticism and music information about the poet, his poetry reflects this versatility. Sound in poetry, harmony, knowledge, symbols, and images of compliance on this issue reveals the talent of (...) the poet. He uses motifs in poetry from Ancient Egypt, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam traditions. This is particularly highlighted in poems motifs identified with religious traditions. In this context, the Tafnit, Bodhisattva, Sidharta, Mâra, Torah, Abraham, Solomon, the Church of Christ, the Trinity concepts are the motives of the history of religions of the poet's poems aesthetic and depth to you to use. Çelebi focuses more on Buddhism. For this reason, he wrote a work called According to Pali texts Budha Gotama. Here he focuses on the Buddha's life story and some Buddhist texts. This study entrated on the religious motifs of a poet who is a historian of religions. In this context, priority has been given to the poetry found associated with religious motifs. In this article, it is tried to explain what these motifs in his poems mean in terms of the history of religions. -/- . (shrink)

Inspired by Charles Taylor’s locating of Herder and Rousseau’s “expressivism” in Marx’s understanding of the human as artist, I begin this essay by examining expressivism in Taylor, followed by its counterpart in M. H. Abrams’s work, namely the wind as metaphor in British Romantic poetry. I then further explore this expressivism/wind connection in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” and Marx’s The German Ideology. Ultimately I conclude that these expressive winds lead to poetic gesture per se, and thereby, (...) to a kind of poetry at the heart of Marx’s philosophy. (shrink)

Book review of 'Srimad Bhagavata—Condensed in the Poet's Words' by A M Srinivasachariar. In this book, the Sanskrit Bhagavata verses have been condensed without using any words other those of the original. This has been translated into English by V Raghavan. This book enables one to have an idea of the main content of the lengthier original text.

The Greek constructions of Zoroaster relate to the historical Zoroaster and to the Zoroaster of the Zoroastrian faith in one respect only. The Greeks knew that Zoroaster was the “prophet,” in the sense of the human founder, of the national Persian religion of their times. That, of course, is a cardinal fact, but it is one fact only. For the rest, the Greek Zoroasters — for there were many — were fantasies of their own imaginations. Since the Greeks were (...) a curious and inventive people, these multiple Zoroasters are interesting creations in their own right. Of more importance, they are elements in the “West’s” construction — or misconstruction — of a major “oriental” religion. -/- . (shrink)