This book offers a view of Iran through politics, history and literature, showing how the three angles combine.
Iran, being a revolutionary society, experienced two great revolutions within the short span of just seventy years, from the 1900s to the 1970s. Both were massive revolts of the society against the state; the main objective of the first being to establish lawful government to make modernisation possible, and the second, to overthrow the absolute and arbitrary state, though this time mainly under the banner of religion and Marxism-Leninism and anti-Westernism. Neither of them succeeded in their lofty ideals for reasons that are explained and analysed within.
The author also offers a detailed description of Iran’s short-term society, examining the political and intellectual lives of two of the most remarkable intellectuals-cum-politicians of the twentieth century. This book provides an overview of modern Persian literature, both poetry and prose, and discusses the works of three of the most remarkable Persian poets and writers of the period. It considers classical Persian literature through the great variety of its form and substance, and neo-classical literary developments in the nineteenth century, covering the whole history of Persian literature. This is crowned in the last chapter by the love poetry of one of the greatest Persian poets.
Iran will be of interest to students and scholars of Iranian studies and Middle East Politics.
Introduction: Iran’s Long History and Short-Term Society Part 1: History and Politics 1. Legitimacy and Succession in Iranian history 2. The Short-Term Society: A Comparative Study in the Long-Term Problems of Political and Economic Development in Iran 3. The Revolution for Law: A Chronographic Analysis of the Constitutional Revolution of Iran 4. Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh: Three Lives in a Lifetime 5. Khalil Maleki: The Odd Intellectual Out 6. The Iranian Revolution at 30: The Dialectic of State and Society Part II: Persian literature 7. Form and Substance in Classical Persian Literature 8. Sa’di’s Love Lyrics 9. Neo-classical Persian Literature: Bazgasht-e Adabi in the Nineteenth Century 10. Modern Persian Literature: From the Constitutional Revolution to the Revolution of February 1979. 11. Poet-Laureate Bahar in the Constitutional Era 12. Iraj, the Poet of Love and Humour 13. Private Parts and Public Discourses in Modern Iran 14. Jamalzadeh’s Fiction 15. Of the Sins of Forugh Farrokhzad
Biography
Homa Katouzian is Iran Heritage Foundation Research Fellow at St Antony’s College and Member of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford
