THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO THE POETICS OF ROMANTIC LOVE IN VIS & RĀMIN A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF NEAR EASTERN LANGUAGES AND CIVILIZATIONS BY CAMERON LINDLEY CROSS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 2015 Copyright © 2015 by Cameron Lindley Cross All Rights Reserved To TJ Quinn and Farouk Abdel Wahab In Memoriam َ َ ُّ َ ْ َ ً ْ اﻻﻳ ﺎ ﻛﻳ ﻬ ﺎاﻟ ﺴ ﺎﻗ ﻰ ا ِدر ﻛ ﺄﺳ ﺎ وﻧ ِﺎوﻟ ﻬ ﺎ َ ُ ُ ﻛ ﻪ ِ ﻋﺸ ﻖ آﺳ ﺎن ﻧِﻤ ﻮد ا ول َوﻟ ﻰ اﻓ ﺘ ﺎد ﻣﺸ ِ ﻜﻠ ﻬ ﺎ Boy bring round the wine and give me some for love that at first seemed easy turned difficult —Ḥāfeẓ (tr. Geoffrey Squires) Contents Abstract viii Acknowledgments ix A Note on Transcription xiii Transliteration Charts xix List of Figures xxi List of Tables xxii List of Abbreviations xxiii Introduction xxiv Proem: The Tale of Fakhri and the Slave-Boy 1 1 The Story of the Story 5 1.1 A portrait of the artist (as a young man?) ......................... 7 1.2 The rise of the Seljuk Turks ................................ 20 1.3 The mysterious sources of Vis & Rāmin .......................... 26 1.4 The Nachleben ....................................... 36 1.5 Recovery, revulsion, and revision ............................. 48 1.6 Welcome to the conversation ............................... 54 2 Finding Romance 71 2.1 The Persian renaissance .................................. 78 2.2 “Love-stories and all that sort of stuff” ........................... 94 2.3 Sailing the sea: Vāmeq & ʿAẕrā ............................... 106 v 2.4 Traversing the desert: Varqa & Golshāh .......................... 119 2.5 Wisdom and beauty .................................... 135 3 An Affair of Conscience 145 3.1 Like unto like ........................................ 155 3.2 A tryst deferred ....................................... 174 3.3 Vis speaks out ....................................... 187 3.4 Queens and nursemaids .................................. 202 3.5 New commitments ..................................... 215 3.6 Anxiety and autonomy ................................... 227 4 Impotent 237 4.1 Portraits of ideal kingship ................................. 246 4.2 The garden despoiled ................................... 260 4.3 Violence and vacillation .................................. 272 4.4 “He who is not a lover is not a man” ............................ 285 4.5 The man within the mountain ............................... 292 5 The Minstrel in the Romance 296 5.1 The minstrels of ancient Iran ............................... 298 5.2 Songs in the story ..................................... 308 5.3 Speaking lyrically ..................................... 319 5.4 Vis’s laments ........................................ 356 5.5 Ramin’s rage ........................................ 366 Epilogue: Liebestod 388 A MSS, Anthologies, and Editions of Vis & Rāmin 404 A.1 Manuscripts ........................................ 404 A.2 Anthologies ........................................ 405 A.3 Editions ........................................... 407 B The Reception of Vis & Rāmin 409 B.1 Moḥammad ʿOwfi, Lobāb al-albāb (w. 617/1220) ..................... 409 B.2 Ḥamdollāh Mostowfi, Tārikh-e gozida (w. 730/1330) ................... 410 B.3 Jājarmi, Munes al-aḥrār (w. after 736/1335) ........................ 410 B.4 Dowlatshāh, Taẕkerat al-shoʿarā (w. 892/1486) ...................... 411 vi B.5 Jāmi, Bahārestān (w. 892/1487) .............................. 412 B.6 Haft Eqlim by Amin Aḥmad Rāzi (w. 1002/1593) ...................... 413 B.7 The Bayāż of Ṣāʾeb (d. 1087/1676) ............................. 414 B.8 Kātip Çelebi (d. 1068/1657), Kashf al-ẓunūn ........................ 414 B.9 Vāleh Dāghestāni (d. 1170/1756), Riyāż al-shoʿarā ..................... 415 B.10 Āẕar Bigdeli, Ātashkada (w. 1174/1760) ........................... 416 B.11 Reżaqoli Khan Hedāyat, Majmaʿ al-foṣahā (w. ca. 1288/1871) ............... 416 C The Many Lives of ʿUrwa b. Ḥizām 418 C.1 Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), al-Shiʿr wa-al-shuʿarāʾ ..................... 419 C.2 Abu l-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī (d. ca. 363/972), Kitāb al-aghānī ................. 425 C.3 ʿAyyuqi (fl. 421/1030), Varqa & Golshāh .......................... 440 D The Tale of Fakhri and the Slave-Boy (Persian) 443 Bibliography 446 vii Abstract In the first half of the eleventh century ce, a series of narrative poems about love and lovers were com- posed in the eastern Iranian lands, marking the advent of what is now generally called the romance genre in Persian literature. However, sustained theoretical considerations of this genre, and the role of these early texts within it, remain few and far between. This dissertation addresses both lacunae by situating these poems in a comparative framework that runs both broad and deep, exploring lines of continuity and change between it and neighboring traditions in Greek, Arabic, and Middle Persian to explore the ways we may use “romance” as a critical term to flesh out our historiography of Persian literature and document the rise of one of its hallmark genres. A study of these works from this perspective reveals that they constitute a highly innovative group of poems, not only in the Persian context but also in the wider generic tradition of which they form a part. We investigate some of these innovations in a close reading of Vis & Rāmin, the most prominent member of these early romances and a sophisticated literary work in its own right. The story provides a nuanced study of romantic love, the central theme of its genre, by raising new problems and implications for those who would pursue its elusive promises. The role of faithfulness and chastity for women in this genre, even when it paradoxically guides them into adultery; the pressures of masculinity, caught within intersecting codes of manhood, kingship, and love; the use of mode to individuate characters and portray competing visions of the world; and the relation between love, death, and selfhood are all discussed in separate chapters. These readings show how Vis&Rāmin and its sibling texts were successful in recasting a kind of literature that had once been viewed as little more than bedtime stories into a subtle medium that could pose complex questions of the individual and her place in society. viii Acknowledgments The first words of a dissertation may be the most difficult to write; so many people have contributed to this project and helped me along the way, I fear the following pages cannot but fall short of what I wish to say and what ought to be said. Despite these inevitable shortcomings, this section does serve as a worthy testament to the adage that it takes a village to raise a child—or in this case, a thirty-two year-old who is finally getting done with school! First and foremost, to my parents for providing me with access to a good education, instilling in me a love of books, and pushing me to follow my dreams; to my mother and her merciless red pen, who taught me the three cardinal rules of writing (edit once, edit twice, edit chicken soup with rice); to Avonne, for her love, support, and delicious baked goods; and to Jonathan, who hasn’t baked me a cookie in his life but made up for it by teaching me how to use LATEX (and I do not exaggerate in saying I could never have done it without him), my hugs, kisses, and perpetual love. I am deeply indebted to the many schools and institutions that nurtured and trained me throughout my life. I first developed a love for history, literature, and languages at D’Evelyn Jr./Sr. High School, and if not for the support I found from my Latin and English teachers Mr. Habel, Mrs. Juganaru, and Mr. Haller, who taught me the fundamentals of self-study and self-critique, I doubt I would have ever begun this journey. The same can be said for my mentors at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Suzanne Mag- nanini and Scott G. Bruce, who introduced me to the wide and wonderful world of medieval thought and literature; the impression they left on me is visible in every word I write. The community of students and scholars at the American University in Cairo has been a second family to me, particularly my dear friends Jim O’Keefe, Mark Rodney, and Brian Loo, and the nonpareil faculty at the Arabic Language Institute; ix they were with me over a crucial time in my life where I wasn’t really sure where all this was going, but I could always rely on their unwavering confidence and encouragement as I found my way forward. Much of my subsequent time in graduate school was funded by generous grants and fellowships from the Cen- ter for Arabic Studies Abroad, the Foreign Language and Area Studies program, the Houtan Scholarship Foundation, and the American Institute of Iranian Studies. The students, staff, and faculty at the University of Chicago have played an enormous role in my life these last ten years: Sahar Ishtiaque Ullah, Rahaf Kalaaji, Esra Taşdelen, Metin Yüksel, Omar Cheta, Hani Khafipour, Chris Markiewicz, Elizabeth Urban, Emran El-Badawi, Ferenc Csirkes, Ed Hayes, Michelle Quay, Kevin Blankinship, Nathaniel Miller, Theo Beers, Sam Hodgkin, Jane Mikkelson, Laurie Pierce, Rich Hefron, Maryam Sabbaghi, Meredith Aska McBride; Traci Lombre, Rusty Rook, Tom McGuire, Bruce Craig, Marlis Saleh, Issa Boulos, and Wanees Zarour; Fred Donner, Orit Bashkin, Na’ama Rokem, Holly Shissler, John Woods, Ahmed El Shamsy, Muzaffar Alam, Thibaut D’Hubert, Martin Stokes, Kay Heikki- nen, Noha Forster, Amina Abdel Alim, Richard Payne, Theo van den Hout, Robert Bird, Malynne Stern- stein, and Stephen Meredith all have my thanks for years of friendship, support, and mentorship. Though they each deserve personalized notes of recognition that would amount to another chapter if they were all assembled in one place, I hope they all know how much they have meant to me through the ups and downs of many years together. Classical Persian literature is a relatively small field in the U.S., and I am glad to have found myself in a community of such welcoming, knowledgable, and dedicated scholars. First, thanks to Heshmat Moayyad for training generations of experts in Persian literature, for his wide-ranging classes, and for his stories, at times funny, poignant, and amazing.