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Reading literary and cinematic events between and beyond American and Persian literatures, this book questions the dominant geography of the East-West divide, which charts the global circulation of texts as World Literature. Beyond the limits of national literary historiography, and neocolonial cartography of world literary discourse, the minor character Parsee Fedallah in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) is a messenger who travels from the margins of the American literature canon to his Persian literary counterparts in contemporary Iranian fiction and film, above all, the rural woman Mergan in Mahmoud Dowlatabadi's novel Missing Soluch (1980). In contention with Eurocentric treatments of world literatures, and in recognition of efforts to recast the worldliness of American and Persian literatures, this book maintains that aesthetic properties are embedded in their local histories and formative geographies.
List of contents
1 Introduction: Towards a Reading of Moby-Dick beyond Tehran.- 2 Call Me Fedallah: Reading a Proleptic Narrative.- 3 Call Him Javid: Limning a National Trope.- 4 Call Her Mergan: Worlding a "Defiant Subject".- 5 Conclusion: A Melvillean Vision, Amiru's Pledge to the World.- Notes.- Index.
About the author
Amirhossein Vafa is Assistant Professor of English Literature at Shiraz University. He obtained his doctorate in English (and Comparative) Literature at the University of Sheffield, UK. Amir specializes in the cross-cultural examination of American and Persian literatures, and has also written on representations of men and masculinities in contemporary Iranian fiction.
Summary
Reading literary and cinematic events between and beyond American and Persian literatures, this book questions the dominant geography of the East-West divide, which charts the global circulation of texts as World Literature. Beyond the limits of national literary historiography, and neocolonial cartography of world literary discourse, the minor character Parsee Fedallah in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851)is a messenger who travels from the margins of the American literature canon to his Persian literary counterparts in contemporary Iranian fiction and film, above all, the rural woman Mergan in Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s novel Missing Soluch (1980). In contention with Eurocentric treatments of world literatures, and in recognition of efforts to recast the worldliness of American and Persian literatures, this bookmaintains that aesthetic properties are embedded in their local histories and formative geographies.
