The essay below is a draft of the introductory chapter to a book tentatively titled “Psychopoetics: Religion, Poetry, and the Evolution of the Western Self.” This project is intended as the third volume in a series that I began with Paleopoetics (2013) and followed with Neopoetics (2016), both of which were published by Columbia University Pre…[Read more]

This chapter examines the impact of a putative oral Homer upon the work of recent performance-makers. The influence of oral-poetic theories is (as yet) an under-explored area of study, neglected by scholars whose literary expertise leads them to focus on dramatic texts and production histories, with each revisionary text or production regarded as…[Read more]

Study and critical edition of this anonymous elegy written in 1516 shortly after King Ferdinand II of Aragon’s death. This paper focuses on both political and cultural circumstances surrounding the Catholic Monarch’s death, together with the tradition of poetical testaments within Castilian songbook poetry. The edition of the text underscores the…[Read more]

meditations on race and poetry, centered on the work of poet Ed Roberson

a poetry chapbook

a collection of poetry

The present article attempts to establish as accurately as possible the chronological trajectory of the unique codex of the Cancionero de Baena (PN1 in the Dutton nomenclature). It begins with a detailed examination of the codicological aspects of the manuscript, which serve to date its origin to around 1465. This origin, combined with the…[Read more]

Addressing Walt Whitman’s reception in Iran, the present essay focuses on the front cover of a book-length translation of Whitman into Persian to study how Whitman’s image is visually translated for an Iranian audience. Among literary discourses of contemporary Iran, the one that associates poetry with mysticism plays the most significant role in…[Read more]

About four decades ago, the two modern editions of the Cancionero de obras de burlas (19OB),2 of Domínguez (1978) and Jauralde Pou-Bellón
Cazabán (1974), finnally condemned to its deserved obscurity Usoz y Río’s 1841 edition. Even though both his edition and his library on spiritual
topics have an evident archaeological interest (Vilar), the q…[Read more]

This essay is an attempt to think about melancholy as a shared creative endeavor, as a trans-corporeal blue (and blues) ecology that would bind humans, nonhumans, and stormy weather together in what Tim Ingold has called a meshwork. In this enmeshment of the “strange strangers” of Timothy Morton’s dark ecology, “[t]he only way out is down” a…[Read more]

Extending an argument presented in two articles published Studies in Art Education and Visual Arts Research, I discuss what would a poetic historiography mean for art education research.

Argues that Qohelet’s famous bit of speech on the seasons at 3:1-8 mimics and mocks proverbial poetry, as part of his larger, prosaic denial that life has discernible and usable rhythms and rhymes.

Part 2 of introduction to The Tale of Genji with bilbiography of Edward Seidensticker’s essays on the novel

The poetry of Teimuraz I’s marks a turning point in Georgian literary history. From 1629–34, the poet-king of Kartli and Kaxetia (eastern Georgia) undertook to produce a Georgian equivalent to Niẓāmī Ganjevī’s famed quintet (khamsa) that stands as one of the major achievements of classical Persian literature. While Teimuraz I imitated the form…[Read more]

The Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics by the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd (d. 1198) has been treated by commentators as wide-ranging as Borges, Renan, and Kilito as an exemplary case of the failure of translation. Critics who presume Ibn Rushd’s failure often concentrate on his rendering of Aristotle’s tragedy and comedy by praise…[Read more]

The literary relation between Parvin E’tesami and Walt Whitman remains a largely unexplored field. This article analyzes the connection between “God’s Weaver” and “A Noiseless Patient Spider” to shed light on Parvin’s creative reception of Whitman. Creating a mixed-breed spider, combining characteristics from both
Whitman’s insect and the Persi…[Read more]

This essay introduces and explores some explicitly theological concerns in the work of the Orcadian poet, novelist, and dramatist George Mackay Brown (1921–96). More specifically, its interest is with Brown’s presentation and treatment of the notion of time. Drawing on examples from a wide selection of his work, it is argued that Brown’s conve…[Read more]

This article examines the panegyric across the literary traditions of West, South, and East Asia, concentrating on Arabo-Persian qaṣīda, the Sanskrit praśasti, and the Chinese fu. In radically different albeit analogous ways, each genre elaborated a political aesthetics of literary form. The West, South, and East Asian genres each cultivated a met…[Read more]

Building on the multivalent meanings of the Arabo- Persian tarjama (‘to interpret’, ‘to translate’, ‘to narrate’), this essay argues for the relevance of Qur’ānic inimitability (i’jāz) to contemporary translation theory. I examine how the translation of Arabic rhetorical theory (‘ilm al-balāgha) into Persian inaugurated new trends within the study…[Read more]

This discussion of Innovations and Turning Points: Toward a History of Kāvya Literature (2014), a magisterial contribution to South Asian literature edited by Yigal Bronner, David Shulman, and Gary Tubb, situates this work within broader trends within the discipline of comparative literature and cross-cultural poetics. I consider how this volume…[Read more]