Semiotic hybridization in Persian poetry and Iranian music

This article demonstrates how Iranian classical music and Persian medieval poetry, taken as separate semiotic systems, form together, in certain contexts, a single hybrid semiotic system with overlapping structural features and shared aesthetic principles. Hjelmslev’s description of connotative semiotic systems serves as a theoretical framework to show the modalities of this hybridization. This phenomenon can be observed through comparative analysis of the interdependence of poetry and music in the Persianate World from a semiotic point of view. On the one hand, the quantitative (chronemic) meter of the Persian classical versification, called ‘aruz, as well as its extraordinarily heavy use of rhyme display a formal structure that evokes that of a musical phrase. On the other hand, the dependence of the structure of the Iranian musical system upon the rhythmic structure of classical poetry suggests a unique character of which few examples exist. This interdependence manifests itself particularly in the mystic (Sufi) poetry of the medieval period, specifically in the work of such renowned poets as Rumi, Sa’di Shirāzi, and Hāfez, who are among the best-known in the West. Examples of their lyric works are examined here to demonstrate occurrences of the collusion between the two semiotic systems.

Politik und Poetik

The article examines the relationship between ›literature‹ and ›politics‹; it focuses on medieval poetry that was produced in the context of partisanship and factional strife. Such texts, it is argued, must not be analysed in a purely ›literary‹ approach – nor in a purely historical one either. Instead, we should study these works from a double perspective which accounts for both their political functions and their artistic character – thus producing closer insights into the literary qualities as well as the historical significance of the respective texts. The article illustrates these general reflections by a close reading of several poems written by Rutebeuf (floruit ca. 1250–1280) in the context of the so-called Mendicant controversy at the University of Paris. It first discusses the short-comings of Michel-Marie Dufeil’s historico-biographical reading of the poems in question. In a second step, it argues that we cannot reasonably understand Rutebeuf’s polemics as a kind of ›autotelic‹ literary play (as proposed by Claudio Galderisi) either. Instead, the article tries to situate Rutebeuf’s poems in different echo chambers which dominate the public sphere of the 13th-century French kingdom – thus producing a fresh look on various intertextual references which have hitherto passed unnoticed.

Medieval Literature in Combination with the Koran

The article emphasizes the importance of medieval poetry in the history of Kazakh literature, as well as the ideological and artistic significance of Turkic literature. It analyzes such topics as the state of affairs of the era, moral problems, changing morals which became the basis in the works of the medieval period. In particular, the influence of the Koran on the works of the medieval period is widely discussed. The main idea of the works of the medieval period was to explain the religion of Islam to the people and call them to spiritual purity. Islam influenced the development of medieval literature in Turkic literature, and this can be seen from the use of the Qur’an and the hadith of the Prophet in the writings of that era. The article reveals how medieval poets sang didactic problems, which were the main theme of the works of the Karakhan era and their contribution to the development of Turkic literature.

Yehudah Ben Samuel Halevi: el exilio como redención

In medieval poetry of the Spanish Jews, both sacred and profane, late nostalgia for a lost and saved by the tongue homeland. She is his firmer ground, which can restore from the wreck of a hostile situation the fullness of collective memory. In the case of tudelano poet Judah Halevi, whose wanderings took him to visit different courts, Zaragoza, Toledo, Cordoba, Sevilla, Granada, but without settling permanently in any, the exile experience led him to feel like axis of history among the nations, live with the hope of returning to a land identified with paradise. Because poetry involved herself in this double movement of expulsion and return out put than usual and back source, the only point that awakens the to the meaning of live.