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

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.

Author: Austin O'Malley
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 02/28/2023
Pages: 291
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.33lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.69d
ISBN: 9781474475112

About the Author

Austin O'Malley is the Roshan Institute Assistant Professor in Persian and Iranian Studies in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago, and his dissertation was cited as an honorable mention by the Foundation for Iranian Studies. His work has appeared in Iranian Studies, Journal of Persianate Studies, Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā The Journal of Middle East Medievalists and Encyclopaedia Iranica.