On Friday 6 September Professor Paul Losensky will be a keynote lecturer at our conference ‘Limits, Boundaries, and Transgression in Literatures and Languages of the Persianate World’ and will give a lecture entitled “The Valley of Whoring and Frivolity”: Taqi Kāshi and the Wayward Lives of Poets in Sixteenth-Century Iran.

In early modern Iran, the writing of poetry moved beyond the court and the khānqāh to spread throughout all levels of society, from the fashionable homes of the nobility to the streets and shops of craftsmen and merchants. The concluding section of Taqi-al-Din Kāshi’s biographical compendium Kholāsat al-ash‘ār va zobdat al-afkār (completed 1016/1607) provides an engaging guide to these changes in the social praxis of poetry. These biographies are based on Taqi Kāshi’s first-hand knowledge of the literary scene, and he makes little pretense of neutral objectivity. His strong narrative voice constantly judges, praises, and criticizes both the poetry and the lifestyles of his subjects. While acknowledging that poetry is an essential sign of learning and culture, he bemoans the dissolute, ethically dubious lifestyle of many poets, a lifestyle marked by drug use, sexual license, and religious deviance. In his lecture, professor Losensky will explore the features of this transgressive subculture and Taqi-al-Din’s struggles to resolve the contradictions of an art form that both enunciates the highest values of the community and panders to its worst vices.

To see the programme of the conference click here.

You are all welcome to join!

Location

Utrecht University, Academy Building (Belle van Zuylen Hall), Domplein 29, Utrecht

Date

Friday 6 September 2024, from 9.30 – 10.30 am

Registration

Please register below to attend this conference. The lectures will not be livestreamed and can only be attended on location at Utrecht University. Registration is compulsory as seats are limited. Entrance is free!

Image: Garden Gathering | The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org)