Content of this Book and History and Categories of Persian Literature

This handbook, like Routledge Handbook of Ancient, Classical and Late Classical Persian Literature, includes a collection of scholarly essays and samples of Persian literary texts to provide facts (general information), instructions (ways to understand, analyze, and appreciate this body of works), and the field’s state-of-the-art research (the problematics of the topics) regarding one of the most important and oldest literary traditions in the world. In this introduction, I first summarize the content of the volume, and then I reiterate the scheme which provides a context for the subjects discussed in the chapters.