We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Much Persian sufi literature is explicitly didactic, aiming to instruct its readers and motivate pious reform. Moving beyond a recapitulation of religious content, The Poetics of Spiritual Instruction investigates the performative function of didactic poetry for mystical audiences, focusing in particular on the verse of Farid al-Din ʿAttar, a central figure of the tradition best known for long narrative poems imbued with edifying sufi themes. Through a series of sensitive and creative readings, O'Malley shows how ʿAttar uses frame-tales, metapoetic commentary and allegories to think through his relationship with his readers, imagine and guide their reactions to his work and perform his instructive authority. By teasing out this implicit, recipient-centred poetics, O'Malley recovers sufi didacticism's participatory, interactive character and shows how the act of reading was invested with ritual significance as a spiritual exercise aimed at the purification of the soul.
Loading metrics...
* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.
Usage data cannot currently be displayed.