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Poetics of the Sufi Carnival: the 'Rogue Lyrics' Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations Arts & Sciences Summer 8-15-2016 Poetics of the Sufi aC rnival: The ‘Rogue Lyrics’ (Qalandariyât) of Sanâ’i, ‘Attâr, and ‘Erâqi Matthew Thomas Miller Washington University in St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds Recommended Citation Miller, Matthew Thomas, "Poetics of the Sufi aC rnival: The ‘Rogue Lyrics’ (Qalandariyât) of Sanâ’i, ‘Attâr, and ‘Erâqi" (2016). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 871. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/871 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts & Sciences at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Program in Comparative Literature Dissertation Examination Committee: Fatemeh Keshavarz, Chair Lynne Tatlock, Co-Chair Mark D. Jordan Ahmet T. Karamustafa Paul Losensky Jessica Rosenfeld Poetics of the Sufi Carnival: The ‘Rogue Lyrics’ (Qalandariyât) of Sanâ’i, ‘Attâr, and ‘Erâqi by Matthew Thomas Miller A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2016 St. Louis, Missouri © 2016, Matthew Thomas Miller TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures...........................................................................................................................iii List of Tables.............................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgements....................................................................................................................v Abstract.....................................................................................................................................xi Preface.....................................................................................................................................xiii Chapter 1: Genre Trouble: Historicizing and Computationally Analyzing the Qalandariyât and Other Thematic Genres in Early Persian Poetry...........................................1 Chapter 2: The Qalandariyât and the Early Persian Poetic System: Qalandariyât as Heterotopic Countergenre and Oppositional Introit.................................................................66 Chapter 3: The Poetics of the Sufi Carnival: Metaphoric Force Dynamics and the Construction of a Radical Sufi Spiritual (Inter-)Subjectivity.................................................115 Chapter 4: Embodying the Qalandari Beloved: (Homo)eroticism, Embodiment, and the ‘Straightening’ of Desire in the Hagiographic Tradition of ‘Erâqi...........................165 Epilogue.................................................................................................................................212 Bibliography...........................................................................................................................217 Appendix I: Translations of Qalandari Poems By Sanâ’i, ‘Attâr, and ‘Erâqi........................239 Appendix II: Early Persian Poetic Terminology, A Review of the Sources..........................373 Appendix III: Classification Table of Qalandariyât in Sanâ’i’s MiM and KM Manuscripts............................................................................................................................392 Appendix IV: R Script for Topic Modeling and Visualization..............................................398 ii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Total Number of Qalandariyât in MiM vs. KM Manuscript...................................39 Figure 2: QPs in MiM vs. KM.................................................................................................41 Figure 3: QTs in MiM vs. KM.................................................................................................42 Figure 4: QT-NQTs in MiM vs. KM.......................................................................................42 Figure 5: Topic Modeling Visualization..................................................................................48 Figure 6: Topic Modeling Topic Probabilities Data................................................................49 Figure 7: Snapshot of Topic Probabilities Table Organized on Basis of “Qalandari Topic”..51 Figure 8: Distribution of MiM Qalandariyât on Basis of Topic Probability Score of “Qalandari Topic”....................................................................................................................51 Figure 9: Distribution of All MiM Poems on Basis of Topic Probability Score of “Qalandari Topic”......................................................................................................................................53 iii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Classification of Qalandariyât in MiM and KM Manuscript.............................40 Table 2: Section Summary of ‘Attâr’s Rogue Anecdote Poem.......................................127 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The road to completing a PhD is long, and it would be impossible to thank here every- one who has helped me in some way on this journey. It is an equally impossible task to ex- press in words truly how much many of those people mentioned below have aided me along the way in ways both big and small. With these provisos, I want to express my gratitude to a number of people and institutions who played a particularly important role in helping me complete this dissertation. I sincerely apologize to anyone that I have forgotten. The completion of this dissertation would never have been possible without the gener- ous financial support of several institutions. Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute awarded me a Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute Fellowship for Excellence in Persian Studies for AY 2012-2013, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Washington University in St. Louis then provided a Dissertation Fellowship for AY 2013-2014, and finally, Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park generously supported my re- search from 2014-2016 with a Roshan Institute Research Fellowship. The work of a scholar can only be as good as the library resources to which he or she has access. Thanks to the support of several libraries and the hard work of numerous librari- ans over the last four years, I was able to consult nearly every resource I requested (and I know some were quite difficult to locate!). Research for this dissertation began at the Ameri- can University of Beirut library in the spring of 2012, and I subsequently drew greatly upon the copious resources of Washington University, University of Chicago, and University of Maryland libraries at different stages in the process of completing it. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the librarians at all of these institutions. I am especially grateful to the interlibrary loan departments of Washington University and University of Maryland who tracked down more than a few obscure—but important!—books and journal articles for me. Graduate school is a time of incredible growth and sometimes trial. I was lucky to share this experience with a great cohort of fellow graduate students at Washington Universi- v ty who contributed tremendously to my intellectual growth and emotional well-being. I would especially like to mention Tazeen Ali, Parisa Dianati, Daniella Farah, Daanish Faruqi, Asher Kohn, Zeeshan Pathan (honorary graduate student), Ellie Pourbohloul, and Michael Rapoport. You all, in different ways, enriched my years at “Wash U,” as we affectionately call it. Most of all, I am grateful to you for your friendship. I was tremendously fortunate to encounter numerous brilliant and kind professors dur- ing my time at Washington University. There are four in particular that I would like to thank here. Linda Nicholson cultivated my interest in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies throughout my PhD years, and graciously provided detailed feedback on chapter four of the present work and several other writings I have sent her over the past few years. Jessica Rosenfeld and Mark D. Jordan both enthusiastically agreed to serve on my dissertation com- mittee despite the fact that I only knew them for a short time before asking them to do so. They also both have provided important guidance to me on matters of professional develop- ment. Lastly, my gratitude to Lynne Tatlock knows no bounds. Although I never had the for- tune of taking a class with her, she has helped me in innumerable ways since taking over as director of the Comparative Literature program at Washington University. She helped me navigate the tricky bureaucratic issues that arose when I left St. Louis for Chicago and then Washington, D.C. (answering my many long and complicated emails sometimes within min- utes of my sending them!) and has provided extensive guidance to me on issues ranging from the fine points of English grammar to professional development. It truly was a pleasure to spend the last three years of my graduate training working so closely with all four of these outstanding scholar-mentors. Another important “thank you” must go to my Persian teachers Nahal Akbari, Ali Abasi, and Tina Rahimi. While my dissertation work
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