Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry

✍ Scribed by Asghar Seyed-Gohrab

Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Year: 2010
Tongue: English
Leaves: 228
Category: Library

No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.

✦ Synopsis

This is the first study of Persian literary riddles to appear in English, analyzing a wide range of complex riddling poems systematically from the tenth to the twelfth century. In addition to the genre of riddles, the book examines the relationship between metaphors and riddles and the genre of literary description.
Literary riddles occur in the early specimens of Persian literature from the tenth century and they continue to be used in modern Iranian society.

What is it that it has neither trousers nor shirt?
[Yet] you can place on her lap whatever you wish
Although she has no tongue, she speaks the truth,
With a dragon, a scorpion upon her neck.
a scale (quppân)

‘Courtly Riddles demonstrates how the taste for riddles lies at the core of the development of Persian poetry. It proposes a careful, learned and systematic analysis of this hitherto little-studied and puzzling poetical game.’
Christine van Ruymbeke, University of Cambridge

✦ Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
PART ONE
Chapter One. The Eloquent Mute
Chapter Two. Inimitable Simplicity
PART TWO
Chapter Three. “Words Covered in Veils”
Chapter Four. “A Nightingale without feathers” Riddlers of the Late Ghaznavid and Early Seljuq Periods
Chapter Five. The Virtues of the King: Riddles in Mukhtærñ’s Hunar-næma
Conclusion
References
Index

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