The Per
sianate Studies Workshop at the University of Michigan is delighted to host a virtual writing workshop with Dr. Domenico Ingenito, who will be presenting a paper titled: “Enacting and Embodying Medieval Sufi Poetry: Performance, Performativity, and Sacred Eroticism“. The event will take place on Zoom from 5-7 pm (EST) on Monday, November 16, 2020.
This presentation draws upon the last two chapters of Domenico Ingenito’s forthcoming book on Sa‘di Shirazi’s ghazals (Beholding Beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry) and outlines the scope of a new research project on lyric performance and performativity in the context of the relationship between medieval courtly ideals and Sufi thought and practices.
The project approaches the role of performance and performativity in the Persian ghazal by analyzing the historical contexts in which this lyric form circulated as a literary practice capable of expressing and catalyzing spiritual, sensual, and aesthetic ideals. The specific context of this investigation is a performance experience known as samāʿ. This technical term is often translated as “spiritual audition,” “mystical concert,” or through other expressions that try to grasp the literary, aural, and religious aspects of samāʿ as a performance ritual. While some modern scholars have focused on this practice by exclusively considering the “mystical” framework of the contexts in which it would take place, this study frames samāʿ as a “lyrical ritual” whose horizon of meanings and functions bridges the gap between the expression of sensual desire and the inward quest for the divine.
By comparing manuals, historical accounts, and poetic excerpts that comment on samāʿ, this paper will shed light on 13th-century ghazal poetry as a ritualistic tool that constantly oscillates between the realm of language and the territory of embodied experiences. In particular, the analysis of premodern ghazals that directly refer to the practice of samāʿ will show how some authors (Sa‘di Shirazi, as well as some of his imitators, Humām-i Tabrizi and Sayf-i Farghāni) would experience lyric poetry as a linguistic exercise aimed at producing physiological responses in the bodies of their audiences, both in the context of shared rituals, and through the practice of silent reading.
Domenico Ingenito is Director of the Program on Central Asia and Assistant Professor of Persian literature at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His research interests center on medieval Persian poetry, visual culture of Iran and Central Asia, gender and translations studies, and geocriticism. His most recent articles are: “Hafez’s “Shirāzi Turk”: A Geopoetical Approach,” “‘A Marvelous Painting’: the Erotic Dimension of Saʿdi’s Praise Poetry,” and “Sultan Maḥmūd’s New Garden in Balkh: An Exercise in Literary Archaeology for the Study of Ghaznawid Ephemeral Architecture.” The title of his forthcoming book is Beholding Beauty: Sa’di of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Medieval Persian Poetry (Brill, December 2020).
Please RSVP to Shahla Farghadani at (sfarghad@umich.edu) for a Zoom link and a copy of Ingenito’s paper.
We are looking forward to seeing you there!