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The Indian Connection in Hedayat’s The Blind Owl

UBC Asian Studies
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805 views 2 years ago
@UBC Asian Studies This presentation: "The Indian Connection in Hedayat’s The Blind Owl" was delivered via Zoom on May 28, 2022, featuring guest speakers Marta Simidchieva (PhD, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University) and Nadeem Akhtar (PhD, Visiting Faculty of Persian, Department of History, Ashoka University, India). Event details: https://asia.ubc.ca/events/event/the-... Sadeq Hedayat’s modernist novel The Blind Owl has inspired numerous comparative studies, mostly focusing on Hedayat’s appropriation of Western literary aesthetics, or on parallelisms between his novel and Western works. Although references to India abound in the novel, few studies have followed the South Asian connection of The Blind Owl. So far, that line of investigation is associated primarily with the publications of Iraj Bashiri, whose monograph The Fiction of Sadeq Hedayat (pub. 1984) posits a Buddhist inspiration behind the characters of Th …...more
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The Indian Connection in Hedayat’s The Blind Owl
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805Views
2022Jun 27
@UBC Asian Studies This presentation: "The Indian Connection in Hedayat’s The Blind Owl" was delivered via Zoom on May 28, 2022, featuring guest speakers Marta Simidchieva (PhD, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University) and Nadeem Akhtar (PhD, Visiting Faculty of Persian, Department of History, Ashoka University, India). Event details: https://asia.ubc.ca/events/event/the-... Sadeq Hedayat’s modernist novel The Blind Owl has inspired numerous comparative studies, mostly focusing on Hedayat’s appropriation of Western literary aesthetics, or on parallelisms between his novel and Western works. Although references to India abound in the novel, few studies have followed the South Asian connection of The Blind Owl. So far, that line of investigation is associated primarily with the publications of Iraj Bashiri, whose monograph The Fiction of Sadeq Hedayat (pub. 1984) posits a Buddhist inspiration behind the characters of The Blind Owl, and correlations between its plotline and the Buddhacarita; while earlier articles of Bashiri’s (e.g. “The Message of Hedayat,” Studies in Islam, Vol. XVII, January 1980, pp. 30-56) find also parallels with The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The proposed paper explores another aspect of the novel’s “Indian connection”: namely, the role accorded to it in the emergence of modern Iranian literary culture and artistic sensibilities. This line of inquiry rests on the assumption that The Blind Owl is not only a work of fiction, but also a literary manifesto—a parable about Iranian cultural reform, which examines the nature of the transition from classical to modern literature and art. In the course of this exploration, the paper surveys instances in which objects, symbols, and characters associated with India are featured in the narrative, and examines their structural and allegorical function. In an attempt to determine the “horizon of expectations”( H.R. Jauss’ term) with regard to India among audiences in Iran and in Western Europe during Hedayat’s sojourn in France, where an early draft of the novel may have been written (see M. F. Farzaneh; H. Katouzian), the paper takes into account the following: the rhetorics of the “Bazgasht” among Iranian literary historians and the representation of the Indo-Persian cultural exchange in influential Iranian literary compendiums, the role of the Iranian diaspora in India in the onset of Iranian modernity; the place of India in the nationalist and nativist discourses of Iran; India and Hinduism in the European Romantic imagination during the 18th -19th c.. These considerations will play a part in defining the cultural codes, with which the novel implicitly engages. About the Alireza Ahmadian Lectures in Iranian and Persianate Studies: Alireza Ahmadian (1981 – 2019) was an enthusiastic researcher, a consummate socio-political analyst, and an opinion leader on foreign policy who nurtured the virtues of diplomatic dialogue and liberal democracy. Alireza was a proud and devoted UBC alumnus, supporter of UBC’s Asian Studies department, and beloved member of Canadian-Iranian Community. UBC’s Asian Studies department renamed this lecture series in his honour in 2019. Alireza’s friends in the community have provided funding to support this series, and this generous gift will see these important academic and community engagement events supported through to the end of the 2025/2026 academic year. To access the full list of events, visit https://asia.ubc.ca/lecture-series/al...

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UBC Asian Studies

1.05K subscribers