The<i>Shāh-nāma</i>and Medieval Orality: Critical Remarks on the ‘Oral Poetics’ Approach and New Perspectives¹

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1This is a review of Olga M. Davidson's Comparative Literature and Classical Persian Poetics, Bibliotheca Iranica: Intellectual Traditions Series, No. 4, Costa Mesa, California: Mazda Publishers, 2000, 158pp., $19.95, ISBN 1-56859-098-9.2Th. Nöldeke, ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der Alexanderromans,’ Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen AW in Wien, Philosophisch-historische Classe 38, no. 5 (Vienna: In commission bei F. Tempsky, 1890); Th. Nöldeke, ‘Das iranische Nationalepos,’ in Grundriß der iranischen Philologie, ed. W. Geiger and E. Kuhn (Strassburg: K.J. Truebner, 1896–1904), vol. II, 130–211.3See Olga M. Davidson, Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1994), and Eadem, ‘The Crown-Bestower in the Iranian Book of Kings,’ in Papers in Honour of Professor Mary Boyce, ed. H. W. Bailey et al. 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1985), Acta Iranica 24, 25, vol. I, 61–148.4See, especially, M. Omidsalar, ‘Review of Davidson 1994,’ Īrānshināsī 7 (1995): 436–57; M. Omidsalar, ‘Unburdening Ferdowsi,’ JAOS 116 (1996): 235–42; M. Omidsalar, ‘Orality, Mouvance, and Editorial Theory in Shāhnāma Studies,’ Jerusalem Studies of Arabic and Islam (Studies in Honour of Shaul Shaked) 27 (2002): 245–82; M. Omidsalar, ‘Mutūn-i sharqī, shīva-hā-yi gharbī, Shāhnāma va abcād-i īdiūlūjīk-i Shāhnāma-shināsī dar maghrib-zamīn,’ Āīna-yi mīrāth 7, no. 17 (2009): 19–67; and F. de Blois, Persian Literature. A Bio-bibliographical Survey. V. Poetry of the Pre-Mongol Period (London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1994), 53–8.5Davidson, Poet and Hero, 32–4, 21–4 and 47–53.6Abū al-Qāsim Firdausī, Shāh-nāma, gen. ed. Jalāl Khāliqī-Muṭlaq (New York: Bibliotheca Persica, 1988–2008), Persian Text Series, N.S. 1, vol. I, 14, l. 140 and no. 6 and 7. In Davidson's collection of essays, all references are to the Moscow edition by E.È. Bertel's et al.7Firdausī, Shāh-nāma, vol. I, 12, l. 115.8As formulated in G. Nagy, Homeric Questions (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996).9Cf. D.H. Green, Medieval Listening and Reading: The Primary Reception of German Literature 800–1300 (Cambridge: CUP, 1994), 162.10Cf. also K. Yamamoto, The Oral Background of Persian Epics. Storytelling and Poetry (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2003), 7, Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures. Supplements to the Journal of Arabic Literature 26.11Davidson, Poet and Hero, 34–7.12Davidson cites Firdausī's original in Persian. For the sake of consistency I transliterate the citations.13Firdausī, Shāh-nāma, VII, 227, ll. 1662–5.14Cited apud, Firdausī, Shāh-nāma, VII, 227, n. 27.15Firdausī, Shāh-nāma, III, 5, ll. 26–8.16Ibid., III, 5, n. 9.17Ibid., I, 98, l. 140.18Ibid., I, 98, v. 150 and n. 24.19P. Zumthor, La lettre et la voix. De la ‘littérature’ médiévale (Paris: Seuil, 1987), 21ff.20K. Yamamoto, ‘Naqqâli: Professional Iranian Storytelling,’ in A History of Persian Literature, gen. ed. E. Yarshater. Vol. XVIII: Oral Literature of Iranian Languages. Kurdish, Pashto, Balochi, Ossetic, Persian and Tajik. Companion Volume II to A History of Persian Literature. Ed. Ph.G. Kreyenbroek & U. Marzolph (London & New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010), 242, n. 1.21`Unṣur al-Maʿālī Kay-Kāvūs b. Iskandar b. Qābūs b. Vushmagīr b. Ziyār, Qābūs-nāma, ed. Ghulām-Ḥusayn Yūsufī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i ʿilmī va farhangī, 1375/1996), 190.22Fakhr al-Dīn Gurgānī, Vīs-u Rāmīn, ed. M. Tūduā and A. Gvākhāriyā (Tehran: Bunyād-i farhang-i Īrān, 1349/1970), 28, l. 48.23Davidson, Poet and Hero, 24. The Zoroastrianism of Daqīqī has been refuted; see Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh, ‘Daqīqī,’ EIr VI (1993): 661–2.24Firdausī, Shāh-nāma, V, 176, l. 1043.25Ibid., V, 175, ll. 1030–6.26Ibid., IV, 173–4, ll. 65–8. For the concept of yādgār as a marker of the literary written tradition of Firdausī's time and later, see J. Rubanovich, ‘Metaphors of Authorship in Medieval Persian Prose: A Preliminary Study,’ Middle Eastern Literatures incorporating Edebiyât 12 (2009): 133, n. 32.27Julie S. Meisami, Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 38–45, 51–3.28See, for instance, Jalāl Khāliqī-Muṭlaq, ‘Az Khudāy-nāma tā Shāh-nāma. Justār-ī dar bāra-yi maʾākhiz-i mustaqīm va ghayr-i mustaqīm-i Shāh-nāma,’ Tār-numā-yi nūf (January 2009), 10–11, www.noufe.com/persish/Khaleghi/pdf/azshahnametakhodayname.pdf (accessed January 27, 2012).29Firdausī, Shāh-nāma, VI, 52–74, ll. 690–1055.30See J. Rubanovich, ‘Re-Writing the Episode of Alexander and Candace in Medieval Persian Literature: Patterns, Sources, and Motif Transformation,’ in Alexander the Great in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, ed. M. Stock and St. Schmitt (Toronto: TUP, forthcoming); and Eadem, ‘Qaydāfa,’ EIr (forthcoming).31O.M. Davidson, ‘A Formulaic Analysis of Samples Taken from the Shahnâma of Firdowsi,’ Oral Tradition 3 (1988): 88–105; and Davidson, Poet and Hero, 54–72 and 171–81.32Yamamoto, The Oral Background of Persian Epics. For an assessment of this interesting, although controversial attempt, see J. Rubanovich, ‘Orality in Medieval Persian Literature,’ in Medieval Oral Literature, ed. K. Reichl (Berlin & Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 655–6, De Gruyter Lexicon.33Cf. K. Reichl, ‘Plotting the Map of Medieval Oral Literature,’ in Medieval Oral Literature, ed. Reichl, 28.34See J. Rubanovich, ‘Aspects of Medieval Intertextuality: Verse Insertions in Persian Prose dāstāns,’ Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 32 (2006): 247–68.

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