Classical Kurdish Poetry as World Literature Ehmede Xani's Mem u zin and Persian Literary Domination

This book discusses Ehmedê Xanii's mathnawi poem, Mem û Zîn (17th century CE) not onlyas the Kurdish national epic, but also as a work of 'world literature' in the sense of circulating beyond its language and culture of origin. After some basic background information on the work and its author, it discusses, first, the question whether and to what extent a Kurdish natinal identity can be found in the work, and more generally what its political beliefs may amount to; second, it discusses the work's concepts and norms of gender and sexuality. Both these chapters show how different the book's sensibility is from modern ones. Next, the study analyzes the work's background in the Persianate poetic and mystical tradition. After an overview of early modern and modern translations of the work(most importantly, Yasar Kemal's 'Legend of Ararat'), the study concludes with a discussion of the ways in which the 'Persianate,' or the Persian cosmopolitan literary sphere, may be reanalyzed as involving a form of premodern litrary domination. As such, this study should be of interest not only to scholars working on Kurdish and Persianate literature, but also to students of literary theory, world literature, and postcolonial studies.