In the Path of the Prophet: Medieval and Early Modern Narratives of the Life of Zarathustra in Islamic Iran and Western India is a historical study of the discursive practices by which Zoroastrians struggled to define their communal identity through constructions of the central figure of their religion. I argue that Zoroastrians adopted cosmopolitan religious vocabularies from the Islamicate and Sanskritic literary traditions for a world in which they were no longer a dominant political force. Contrary to much scholarship, which characterizes medieval Zoroastrian thought as stagnant, I contend that literary production in this period reveals extraordinary intellectual engagement among Zoroastrians endeavoring to make meaning of their ancient religious traditions in a rapidly changing world. The essays of my dissertation focus on four moments in Zoroastrian intellectual history. I begin with an analysis of the thirteenth century Persian Zarātushtnāma (The Book of Zarathustra), examining interactions between Zoroastrian theology and prophetology and contemporary Islamic thought, focusing on the role that miracles played in medieval Zoroastrian conceptions of prophethood. In my next essay, I explore questions of identity, orthodoxy and heterodoxy by investigating a group of Zoroastrian mystics who migrated from Safavid Persia to Mughal India around the seventeenth century. Influenced by the Illuminationist school of Islamic philosophy, they left behind a body of texts which blur religious boundaries. In my third essay, I examine the earliest literary compositions in the Gujarati language about the life of Zarathustra, employing theoretical discussions of literary cosmopolitanism and vernacularization to trace how Zoroastrian stories were reimagined by Indian Zoroastrians (Parsis) to fit Indo-Persian and Sanskritic discursive conventions. Finally, I look at the ways in which Zoroastrian prophetology was transformed through the experience of colonial modernity, focusing especially on the role of the printing press and the creation of a literate public sphere. I argue that the formation of a Parsi colonial consciousness was an experience of loss and recovery, in which traditional Persianate forms of knowledge were replaced by newly introduced sciences of philology, ethnology, and archaeology, fundamentally reshaping the Parsi conception of their religion and religious boundaries. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

The present thesis consists of an edition of an Iranian literary work whose theme is a journey to the Other World, namely the Ardāy-Vīrāf Nāma. The version of this work which is here edited and commented on is a prose version in the Zoroastrian Persian language. A discussion about Iranian conceptions of the Other World is also an integrated part of the thesis. The text of the Ardāy-Vīrāf Nāma is edited employing a text critical method by using six manuscripts. The oldest manuscript, which has been used as the base manuscript for editing the text, was written in 896 A.Y. (Yazdgirdī)/1527 A.D. The edited text is also translated into English, and followed by a Commentary on names, unusual words and Zoroastrian terms used in the text. Other Iranian documents about journeys to the Other World are studied in this thesis as well, and all are compared to the Ardāy-Vīrāf Nāma. The Zoroastrian Persian version of this work is also compared to its Parsig version. The differences between the Zoroastrian Persian and the Parsig versions indicate that they have their background in two different world views. To prove this theory, some significant elements in the Zoroastrian Persian version, which demonstrate that this is a pre-Zoroastrian epic narrative, have been compared to some elements in the Parsig version that show that this is a religious Zoroastrian account. Possible reasons for the change in Ardāy-Vīrāf Nāma from a pre-Zoroastrian epic narrative into a Zoroastrian-religious one are also suggested. A king named Davānūs is one of the Ardāy-Vīrāf Nāma personages. In an appendix, the historical personality of Davānūs is discussed with reference to Arabic, Persian and Greek historiography.

Thesis (M.A.A.S.) -- Air University, 2004. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on April 24, 2009). "June 2004." Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-91).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Georgetown University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

De nombreux arts traditionnels et contemporains présentent une inventivité et une vitalité remarquable, cependant pour beaucoup ils ne sont peu ou pas étudiés.L'approche choisie dans ce mémoire tentera d'examiner la création artistique iranienne du point de vue de son ancrage dans la tradition, ainsi que dans les rapports texte-image-son qui caractérisent l'art persan.Ma démarche consiste à trouver des solutions plastiques (en peinture) qui expriment les rapports entre l’intérieur et l’extérieur. Les différents modes de représentation et les effets formels servent à l’extériorisation des sensations. Donc il en résulte différents niveaux d’interprétation : d’abord celui qui consiste à examiner les messages qui nous viennent de la perception, puis celui du langage et de l’expression plastique qui interprète les formes et reconstruit le message. Il existe aussi un décalage entre l’interprétation plastique d’un état mental (en peinture) ; et l’observation et l’enregistrement de la réalité (par le son) qui servent ici de point de départ pour la peinture. / Many traditional and contemporary arts have remarkable inventiveness and vitality, and little or no study.The approach chosen in this project will try to examine the Iranian artistic creation from the point of view of its anchoring in the tradition, as well as in the text-image-sound relationship that characterizes Persian art.My approach is to find plastic solutions (in painting) that express the relationship between the inside and the outside. The different modes of representation and the formal effects serve to externalize sensations. So it results in different levels of interpretation: first of all to examine the messages that come to us from perception, then that of the language and the plastic expression which interprets the forms and reconstructs the message. There is also a gap between the plastic interpretation of a mental state (in painting); and the observation and recording of reality (by sound) which serves here as a starting point for painting.

This thesis offers the first detailed study of publishing culture in the medieval eastern Islamic world by examining how two influential anthologists active in Central Asia mediated between authors and their audiences. It analyses the contents of al-Tha'ālibī's (d. 429/1037-8) Yatīmat al-dahr, a biographical anthology of Arabic poetry and prose concerned with the literature of the 4th/10th and the early 5th/11th centuries, comparing them with the material found in 'Awfī's (d. 640/1242 or before) Lubāb al-albāb, a biographical anthology of Persian poetry focused on verse produced between the late 3rd/9th and the early 7th/13th centuries. Yatīmat al-dahr and Lubāb al-albāb are approached as ventures which aimed to render the high culture of Arabic and Persian literature accessible to readers by presenting hitherto unpublished texts in a pedagogical fashion. The thesis contributes to a current wave of research that is concerned with the history of the book in the Islamic world, but it moves the focus of such scholarship onto literary texts and their manipulation. Its principal findings can be summarised as follows: Firstly, it revises the prevalent idea that literary culture was entirely dependent on patronage, by demonstrating how market demand influenced the kinds of writing produced in the different regions of the Arabic- and Persian-speaking worlds. Patronage emerges as a force that was intertwined with the book trade, which had already begun to define conceptions of authorship. Secondly, it shows that anthologies are more than collections of exemplary texts, by uncovering how al-Tha'ālibī and 'Awfī pursue the study of society, literary history and literary theory. The anthologists did not simply reproduce extracts, but edited them in accordance with their broader intellectual projects. Lastly, it reconstructs the cosmopolitan literary culture which existed in Khurasan and Transoxiana between the 4th/10th and 7th/13th centuries, showing that many authors worked in bilingual Arabic-Persian environments, moved between Arabic and Persian spheres, and read books in both languages. The thesis is accompanied by an index of circa eight thousand poems catalogued by genre, and by an appendix which lists the material that the anthologists drew from their sources.

L’avancée considérable des dispositifs de vraisemblance, l’imposante combinaison de l’art et du virtuel, le souci d’archives, la volonté de réalité etc. qui marquent notre temps ont mis la question de "pourquoi la fiction ?" au centre des réflexions poétiques et philosophiques. Question qui, à ses deux extrémités, implique le discours littéraire et le discours historiographique. Pour y répondre, la pensée en Occident fait traditionnellement appel à ses origines grecques. De manière quasiment invariable, la réponse a été recherchée dans un cadre bipolaire et référentiel constitué du réel et du fictionnel. Dans le présent travail, il s’agit de remonter jusqu’aux Grecs, à la recherche d’une pensée de l’art et du fictionnel qui ne se contenterait pas du cadre référentiel. Ainsi, sont repérés les éléments d’une autre lecture grecque qui se trouve être à l’origine de la poétique élaborée au sein de l’islam iranien : une poétique orientale qu’il faut considérer comme un autre devenir de la poétique grecque. À partir des discours théorique, littéraire et historiographique irano-islamiques, il est montré comment cette poétique orientale exige de penser la fiction dans le cadre d’un schème tripartite : le rapport du réel au fictionnel fait immanquablement entrer en ligne de compte un troisième pôle qu’on appelle la vérité ou le réel de la réalité. D’un point de vue comparatif, le schème tripartite permettra de penser la question de la fiction sous un nouveau jour. / The ingenious progress of the means of likelihood, the required combination of art and the virtual, the interest for archives, the will of reality ect., that characterize our time, have given a particular interest to the question of "why fiction?", both in the philosophical reflections and the poetical investigations. In its two end-points, this question concerns both literary and historiographical discourses. Western thought has traditionally referred to its Greek origins in order to answer the question. Yet most of the time, the answer is formulated in a bipolar, referential framework consisting of the real and the fictional. Instead, in the present work, the issue is to move back up the Greek legacy in search of some art and fiction thought which goes beyond this referential framework. Doing this, we can identify the elements of a different reading of Greek thought which is actually involved in the very starting point of the poetics developed within the Islamico-Iranian cultural world : an oriental poetics which is to be considered another becoming of Greek poetics. Through theoretical, literary and historiographical discourses in Post-Islamic Iran, the author tries to show this oriental poetics requires thinking fiction now in a tripartite schema : the relationship between the real and the fictional takes necessarily into account a third pole that one can call the truth or the real of reality. From a comparative perspective, the tripartite schema could help to think the general issue of fiction in a different way.

Orientadores: Milton Jose de Almeida, Wenceslao Machado de Oliveira Júnior / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Educação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-21T18:39:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Silva_JosirleyMariaMenezesda_D.pdf: 4386460 bytes, checksum: 3f5253ec22d3d4fc70c264d16a5ce916 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Resumo: Palavras despertadas a partir da pulsação das imagens poéticas dos filmes Bab'Aziz, de Nacer Khemir, e Shirin, de Abbas Kiarostami, conversando com os poemas Khosrow e Shirin e As sete princesas, ambos de Nezâmî. Encontros, caminhos, desertos em palavras, tendo como guia de travessia os estudos de Henry Corbin a partir dos relatos e da Teosofia de Sohravardî: busca pelas belezas do mundo árabe persa do século XII na perspectiva da Luz do Conhecimento. / Abstract: Words awakened from the pulse of poetic images of the films Bab'Aziz by Nacer Khemir, and Shirin by Abbas Kiarostami, talking to the poems Khosrow and Shirin and The Seven Princesses, both of Nezami. Dating, roads, deserts in words, guided crossing studies from Henry Corbin reports and Theosophy Sohravardi: search for beauty in the Arab world in the twelfth century Persian perspective of the Light of Knowledge. / Doutorado / Educação, Conhecimento, Linguagem e Arte / Doutora em Educação

Cette thèse à pour objectif d’étudier la fortune littéraire de Saadi en France du XVIIe siècle à l’époque contemporaine. Saadi est présenté pour la première fois aux Français en 1634 dans une traduction fragmentaire de son Gulistan par André du Ryer. Cette traduction ouvre la voie à la connaissance de Saadi dans d’autres pays d’Europe. Dès les premiers contacts avec son œuvre, les lettrés français la trouvent agréable et utile. Les différents écrivains, selon leurs goûts et la tendance de leur époque, adaptent ou imitent les historiettes de Saadi ou s’inspirent de ses idées. Au siècle classique, quelques fabulistes dont La Fontaine, tirent la matière de certaines de leurs fables des historiettes du Gulistan. Au siècle des Lumières, les écrivains empruntant des idées à l’œuvre de Saadi sont beaucoup plus nombreux. Les conteurs et fabulistes de cette époque s’inspirent des leçons morales et politiques des écrits de Saadi et voient en lui le critique des mœurs. Les philosophes, les encyclopédistes, l’accueillent comme un des leurs et en font leur porte-parole politique et anticlérical. Son nom devient alors une arme d’attaque dans leur plume satirique. Avec le XIXe siècle et la publication de la première traduction du Boustan et celle la plus crédible du Gulistan, les Français pouvaient goûter pleinement la poésie de Saadi. Le regard des romantiques s’oriente vers son aspect esthétique et sentimental. De nouveaux thèmes sont exploités chez lui : l’amour, la nature, la fuite du temps. Enfin, les écrivains du XXe siècle continuant à goûter les amours de la rose et du rossignol racontés par Saadi, suivent les élans mystiques du Boustan pour se délasser un moment. / The aim of this thesis is to study the literary fortune of Saadi in French literature from 17th century up to present. For the first time in 1634 Saadi was introduced in France through an incomplete translation of Gulistan by André du Ryer.This translation paved the way for Saadi to be introduced to other European countries. With the first confrontation with his works French literary scholars found Saadi’s works agreeable and attractive. Different writers according to their tastes and the atmosphere of their period either imitate him or get inspired by him. In classic time some of the writers like La Fontaine take the material of their stories from Gulistan stories. In the Enlightenment period the number of writers who have been inspired by Saadi increased. The writers of this period are mostly inspired by Saadis political or moral aspects of his works and they consider him as the critic of rituals and traditions. The philosophers and authors of encyclopaedia think of Saadi as one of them and introduce him as their political anti-church speaker. They use Saadi’s name as a weapon in their satiric writing. It was in 19th century that the first translation of Boustan and one of the most outstanding translation of Gulistan enabled the French to taste Saadi’s poetry. The Romantics were attracted by the aesthetics and the sentimental aspects of his works. They found the new themes such as love, nature, and time. The 20 century writers continue to enjoy the concept of love as manifested in the images of ‘nightingale and flower’ and are fascinated by the mystic features of Boustan.

Cette thèse soutient avec la théorie de la néoténie linguistique l’idée que l’ordre déjà établi par une langue chez le locuteur nouvellement bilingue n’est plus stable lors de l’insertion d’une deuxième langue et ensuite, la concurrence non égalitaire qui se révèle entre les deux. Entre la langue et l’identité, il existe une interdépendance. Le bilingue français-persan subordonné, ayant immigré à un territoire francophone à l’âge linguistiquement adulte, tâche d’insérer un autre système de comportements linguistiques, une autre manière d’être, dans un espace cognitif qui, n’en éprouve pas le besoin de continuer pour fonctionner normalement. Donc il s’affranchit du monolinguisme persanophone, i.e. de son spécialisation naturelle, pour opter au bilinguisme français-persan. L’enfant bilingue français-persan issu de famille linguistiquement mixte, est théoriquement conçu pour créer son être immanent dans les deux langues. Mais en réalité, la valorisation des langues française et persane, la scolarisation, le choix de la langue familiale et plusieurs d’autres paramètres déterminants effectuent des changements considérables dans le choix de la langue du locuteur concerné. Si le sentiment d’autosuffisance permet au locuteur bilingue français-persan d’être identifiable à la satisfaction de son environnement linguistique en français, l’appropriation et la pratique du persan, dans la famille pour lui ne reste plus une nécessité absolue car il se voit dans un univers linguistique, mental et culturel dont la réalité orale est plus pertinente avec la sphère sociale. / This dissertation, using the theory of linguistic neoteny, supports the idea that the order initially established by a language in a speaker who has become bilingual at a later stage is no longer stable at the time when the second language is inserted, and subsequently an unequal competition between the two languages becomes apparent. There exists an interdependence between the language and the identity of the speaker. The subordinated French-Persian bilingual, who has immigrated to a francophone area at the age of linguistic adulthood, tries to insert another system of linguistic behavior, another mode of being, in a cognitive space which does not sustain the need to continue to function normally. Thus, s/he overcomes his/her Persian monolingualism, that is, his/her natural specialization, in order to opt for French-Persian bilingualism.The French-Persian bilingual child born into alinguistically mixed family is theoretically conceived to create his/her immanent being in both languages.But in reality, the value ascribed to a language, schooling, the choice of family language, and several other determining factors significantly affect the speaker’s choice of his/her preferred language. If the French-Persian bilingual’s sense of self-sufficiency allows him/her to identify him-/herself as a speaker of French to the satisfaction of his/her linguistic environment, the appropriation and practice of Persian in his/her family are no longer strictly necessary because s/he sees him-/herself in a mental, cultural and linguistic universe whose oral reality is more relevant to the social sphere.