Persian Parables by Hamid Dabashi

Persian Parables by Hamid Dabashi

A major reassessment of the parable in Persian literature and its contribution to philosophical and creative thinking

In this book, Hamid Dabashi offers a radical reconsideration of the parable in Persian literature, arguing that parabolic thinking is a mode of philosophical reflection. Dabashi eschews the conventional focus on the supposed moral or political allusions in these parables—the “moral of the story”—to allow the radical surfaces of their poetic disposition to reveal themselves. He turns his attention instead to what Kafka called “the fabulous yonder” as the defining moment of the parable. Focusing on a sustained course of Persian parables through the ages, Dabashi shows that the genre is not limited to masterpieces by such iconic poets as Sa’di, Rumi, Attar, and Sana’i. In fact, he argues, parabolic thinking has a much wider domain in Persian literature and philosophy and plays a distinct role within Persian and Islamic traditions.

The cumulative result of these parables spread across Persian prose and poetry is an alam al-mithal, a parabolic world—a world of parables, similitudes, and verisimilitudes. Dabashi points to the moment in these works when life is absorbed into the formal fabric of the stories, erasing the borderline between fact and fantasy, history and story, the living and the dead, the real and the unreal—and life itself, as we live it, becomes a strange and captivating parable. With this circular self-referentiality, parables enable a way of thinking as a philosophical form.

Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of The World of Persian Literary Humanism, Persophilia: Persian Culture on the Global Scene, Iran without Borders: Towards a Critique of the Postcolonial Nation, and other books.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780691269894
ISBN 10	0691269890
Title	Persian Parables
Author	Hamid Dabashi
Series	Translation Transnation
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Princeton University Press
Year published	2026-08-25
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.