Introduction

The purpose of this succinct chapter is to introduce readers in Iranian Studies to an approach to Persian literature that highlights organic literary developments, local and regional networks and rooted forms of experimentation. Above all, an attempt is made to disburden modernity of its aseptic remoteness from tradition by acknowledging the latter’s role in shaping Iranian modernity. This is done by critiquing the grand narratives of literary scholarship, including the prominence of the founding father, the view that literary history is an imaginative extension of an episodic (socio-)political conception of history or a repository of political representations, the focus on aesthetic theory, which frequently coerces Persian literature into being beholden to the jewelled archetypes of modernism, and the nativist endeavour to reverse the idea of a foreign platonic ideal.