Explore the Persian art of words—rhetoric, prosody, and rhyme—brought to light for today’s reader.
This edition compiles key passages from classic Persian sources, presenting a clear, English-language guide to how words can be arranged with elegance, precision, and expressive power. It navigates the essentials of composition, from prose and verse forms to the rules that shape rhythm, sound, and meaning, making these age-old techniques accessible to modern readers.
The book offers practical coverage of:
- Different kinds of prose and verse, and what makes them poetry when both rhyme and measure unite.
- Various poetic forms, including ghazals, kadseedeh, and other measures used in Persian poetry.
- Techniques of word construction, Tir-see-a (placing words in measure) and Tuj-nee-se (sound-alike repetition).
- Rhyme, cadence, and the use of refrains, mutla, and redee to craft skilled endings.
Ideal for readers of literary history, rhetoric, and poetics, this volume serves as a practical introduction to classical Persian composition and its enduring craft.