| This work examines the image of Arabs in modern Persian literature, as part of the issue of defining an "Iranian" Self in terms of an "Arab" Other, through the close reading and explication of novels, short stories, essays and poems by major Iranian writers of the 20th century, with emphasis on writings from the Pahlavi period (1921-1979).;The dissertation considers the problem of self-definition, given Iran's ethnic diversity and history as an Islamic but non-Arab country, 19th- and 20th-century Iranian nationalism, and the role of modern Persian literature in the process of defining Iranianness.;Works which serve to represent the spectrum of writing and opinion are discussed. Fiction writer and essayist Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh (b. 1892) regards Islam as an integral part of Iranian culture, but objects to a non-Iranian, and, in his view, backward, Arab Islam. Sadeq Hedayat (1903-1951), Iran's most famous 20th-century author, believes that Iran's superior racial and cultural identity, shared with "Aryan" India, was destroyed by the Arab Muslim invaders. Poet Mehdi Akhavan-e Sales (1928-1990) blames the Arabs for destroying Iran's Aryan cultural identity and longs for a return to pre-Islamic Zoroastrian culture and greatness. Poet Nader Naderpour (b. 1929) rejects Islam as Arab and backward, and fundamentally opposed to true Iranian culture and values. Short story writer and novelist Sadeq Chubak (b. 1916) blames the Arabs for dispossessing Iranians of their true history and culture; he rejects Islam as a religion, and as Arab. Poet Forugh Farrokhzad (1934/5-1967) was not concerned with Arabs; she criticizes Islam, but as an Iranian, not an Arab, institution. Poet Tahereh Saffarzadeh (b. 1936) sees Islam as a universal, not an Arab, phenomenon; she portrays the Arab invaders of Sasanid Iran as Muslims bringing the liberating truth of Islam to a people waiting to accept it. For short story writer and novelist Simin Daneshvar (b. 1921), Arab and Islamic elements in Iranian culture have an Iranian, rather then a foreign character.;Finally, the dissertation focuses on works by Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923-1969), the most prominent literary figure in Iran in the 1960s, as the fairest and most revealing analysis of a prominent writer, sympathetic both to Persian Iranian cultural nationalism and to Islam. Al-e Ahmad initially rejects Arabs, but accepts Shi'i Islam as an integral part of Iranianness. |
