Hedayat's Blind Owl as a Western Novel

Michael Beard

Published by Princeton University Press 1990

Hedayat's Blind Owl as a Western Novel

Michael Beard

Volume 1113 in the series Princeton Legacy Library

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400861323

Overview
Contents

About this book

The Iranian writer Sadeq Hedayat is the most influential figure in twentieth-century Persian fiction--and the object of a kind of cult after his suicide in 1951. His masterpiece The Blind Owl is the most important novel of modern Iran. Its abrupt, tortured opening sentence, "There are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude like a kind of canker," is one of the best known and most frequently recited passages of modern Persian. But underneath the book's uncanniness and its narrative eccentricities, Michael Beard traces an elegant pastiche of familiar Western traditions. A work of advocacy for a disturbing and powerful piece of fiction, his comprehensive analysis reveals the significance of The Blind Owl as a milestone not only for Persian writing but also for world literature.

The international, decentered nature of modernist writing outside the West, typified by Hedayat's European education and wide reading in the Western canon, suggested to Beard the strategy of assessing The Blind Owl as if it were a Western novel. Viewed in this context, Hedayat's intricate chronicle challenges the very notion of a national literature, rethinking and reshaping our traditions until we are compelled, "through its eyes," to see them in a new way.

Originally published in 1990.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

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Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xiii
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xv
CHAPTER ONE. Nationalist Poetics and Its Shadows Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
CHAPTER TWO. The Book of Love: Dante as Template Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	42
CHAPTER THREE. Chapter One Says You Love Her Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	68
CHAPTER FOUR. Gothic I: A Generic Background Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
Chapter Five. GOTHIC II: POE AS GENERIC BACKGROUND Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	140
Chapter Six. SALOME: THE PARABLE OF THE ARTIST Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
Chapter Seven. PROLEGOMENON TO THE BLIND OWL AS AN EASTERN NOVEL Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	238
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	263

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