Losing Our Minds, Coming to Our Senses

Sensory Readings of Persian Literature and Culture

Mehdi Khorrami, Amir Moosavi

• Publisher: Leiden University Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9789400604148
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Literary
• Index: Literature

By bringing sensory studies to the study of Persian literature and culture, Losing Our Minds, Coming to Our Senses: Sensory Readings of Persian Literature and Culture inaugurates a new chapter for Iranian and Persian studies. This volume offers a diverse set of readings across periods, genres and forms throughout Persian literary history, demonstrating the value of sensory studies as an approach to Persian cultural production, literary or otherwise. The book's chapters conceptualize sensory aesthetics in the context of Persian literature and suggest ways in which sensory studies can be used to reimagine and enrich existing approaches to Persian literature. The volume sheds light on the scope of Persianate sensoria over the long, rich history of Persian letters. In doing so, it also offers a new model for a comparative approach to the study of Persian literary works through the larger field of sensory studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• A Note on Translations and Transliterations
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Minds/Senses
• 1. Transcending the Written Text: From Dava’i’s Sensescapes to Sensorial Promiscuities in a Hafezian Banquet
• 2. Beyond Senses: Rumi’s Mystical Philosophy of Sense Perceptions
• 3. Ta‘ziyeh and Social Jouissance: ‘Beyond the Pleasure’ of Pain in Islamic Passion Play and Muharram Ceremonies
• 4. Seeing Red, Hearing the Revolution: The Multi-Sensory Appeal of Shuresh
• 5. Radical Openness in Forugh Farrokhzad’s The House is Black
• 6. Feminine Sense Versus Common Sense in Two Persian Folktales from Iran: ‘A Girl’s Loyalty’ and ‘Seven Poplar Trees’
• 7. Sonic Triggers and Fiery Pools: The Senses at War in Hossein Mortezaeian Abkenar’s Scorpion
• 8. The Sensorium of Exile: The Case of Elyas Alavi and Gloria Anzaldúa
• 9. Making Sense of the Senses: A Sensory Reading of Moniro Ravanipour’s These Crazy Nights
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index