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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Poetics of Spiritual Instruction: Farid Al-Din ʿattar and Persian Sufi Didacticism

The Poetics of Spiritual Instruction: Farid Al-Din ʿattar and Persian Sufi Didacticism

O'Malley, Austin

Paperback

Series: Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture

Literary CriticismIslam

ISBN10: 1474475124
ISBN13: 9781474475129
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: Nov 30 2024
Pages: 304
Weight: 0.94
Height: 0.64 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

Much Persian sufi literature is explicitly didactic, aiming to instruct its readers and motivate pious reform. Moving beyond a recapitulation of religious content, The Poetics of Spiritual Instruction investigates the performative function of didactic poetry for mystical audiences, focusing in particular on the verse of Farid al-Din ʿAttar, a central figure of the tradition best known for long narrative poems imbued with edifying sufi themes. Through a series of sensitive and creative readings, O'Malley shows how ʿAttar uses frame-tales, metapoetic commentary and allegories to think through his relationship with his readers, imagine and guide their reactions to his work and perform his instructive authority. By teasing out this implicit, recipient-centred poetics, O'Malley recovers sufi didacticism's participatory, interactive character and shows how the act of reading was invested with ritual significance as a spiritual exercise aimed at the purification of the soul.

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