A Revolution in Rhyme: Poetic Co-option under the Islamic Republic

Cover
A Revolution in Rhyme: Poetic Co-option under the Islamic Republic
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Abbreviations
Note on Transliteration and Translation
	Consonants
	Vowels
	Other Rules
Introduction: “Awakening the Nation”: Poetry and Power in Modern Iran
	The Origins of Poetry and Patronage in Iran
	The Label of “Official Literature”: Advantages and Limitations
	The Question of Literary Merit
	Existing Scholarship and Its Limitations
	Mapping Poetic Continuity and Rupture: A Conceptual Framework
	The Structure of the Book
	Poetry and the 1979 Revolution
Chapter 1: Rethinking the Islamic Republican Canon
	Two Generations, Ten Poets
	The First Generation
	Second Generation
	Unravelling the Ethics of a Canon
Chapter 2: “Surgery of the Soul”: Introducing the Howzeh
	The Beginnings of Cultural Control
	The Birth of the Howzeh
	Co-option into the State Ideological Apparatus
	Following the Rival’s Fashion
	A Jostle for Control and the Removal of Thought
	The Absence of Creative Integrity
	A Sinister Side to State Control
	One Voice, Many Writers
	The Upswing in Official Poetry
Chapter 3: Returning to the Roots: The Dark and Light of the Village
	The Political Motive for Nostalgia
	Defining the Village
	Politicizing the Village
	The Role of the Rural Revolutionary
	The “Official” Village: The “Gaze that Tastes of Milk”
	“Machine-Made Bread”
	“Simple, Like a Village”: The Rise of a Rustic Utopia
	From Noble Peasant to Migrant Margin-Dweller
	The Fading Village
	Reviving the Village
	The Danger of Collective Greenwashing
Chapter 4: A War to Remember (1): Decoding the Poetic Violence of War
	Origins of “Devotional” Combative Poetics
	Devotional Militant Poetic Forms
	Origins of the Mystic-Combative Poetics
	The Mystification of Death
	In Search of a Different Cure
Chapter 5: A War to Remember (2): The Other Face of War
	Writing in the Warzone
	Writing in the War-Scarred Streets
	Writing in a Wounded Alphabet
	Writing against a Common Enemy
	Writing for the Children of War
	Writing the Real Message of War
Chapter 6: Loss and Nostalgia: Official Poetry in Post-War Chaos
	The Devastation of War, the Balm of Nostalgia
	The Loss of the State Patriarch
	The Loss of Utopia and the Rise of Protest Poetry
	The Rise of the Reform Movement: Re-envisioning the Self, Religion, and Ideology
Chapter 7: Inventing a Courtly Tradition: Poetry and Power in Khamenei’s Islamic Republic
	Passing the Poetry Baton
	From Bookworm to the Ruling Ayatollah
	The Search for Political Legitimacy: Poetry as a New Form of Political Covenant
	Instating a New Courtly Poetic Tradition
	Annual Poetry Ceremonies and the Poetics of Conversion
	Official Poets and the Question of Social Mobility
	Characteristics of Official Verse
	Searching the Past to Rule the Present
	An “Imagined” Iran and the Power of a Panegyric Ode
Selected Bibliography
	Primary Sources
	Secondary Sources
Index