Although poetry still holds an important place in the creative literature of contemporary Iran, it has in recent years come to be rivaled in popularity and importance by prose fiction—the novel, the novella, and especially the short story. The rise of these genres represents a considerable innovation in the nature of Persian literature; it refl […]
A vast amount of Persian prose literature, in fields ranging from history to philosophy, was produced during the pre-modern period. This prose literature Literature 69 certainly has its value, and much of it is in print and read by Iranians today. However, it is fair to say that it is mostly of interest to specialists […]
New (or Modern) Persian is one member of a great family of Iranian languages that have been spoken across Asia in both ancient and modern times. Its linguistic ancestry is as diverse and complex as that of English, and this has made it just as richly expressive as a means of communication. The core of […]
A discussion of the role of literature in Iranian culture should begin with several caveats. First of all, the discussion in this chapter is limited to Persian literature. There are, of course, other languages in Iran that have a literary tradition, but it is not possible to try to deal with them here. This is […]
