Illustrated Divans of Hafiz: Persian aesthetics at the intersection of art and ghazal literature, 1450-1550
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Abstract
This dissertation examines illustrated Divans (collections of poetry of a single author) of the Persian poet Hafiz (d. 1388-89) made in Iran and Central Asia during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and collected by the cultural elite. Celebrated for their multivalent potential, Hafiz’s ghazals (lyric poems) resist narrative interpretation and employ ambiguity as a rhetorical gesture. Sensuous visual and figurative materials familiar from the Persian manuscript tradition began to appear in Divans of Hafiz in the late fifteenth century. Combined with non-narrative and interpretively difficult poetry these images defy typical iconographic interpretations common to Islamic arts of the book. The visual arts’ inextricable conceptual linkages to the Persian poetic tradition, which are celebrated but rarely examined directly, form the core of this dissertation. Visual and material features of decorated Divans of Hafiz are examined alongside the accompanying literature, refining scholarly understanding of social and intellectual Persian court culture. Illustrated Divans of Hafiz visually and materially reflect contemporaneous primary texts that establish concepts of image making and its history in early modern Persian culture, drawing their images and rhetorical language directly from the poetic tradition and at times from the verses collected in Hafiz’s Divan. Chapter one discusses fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Persian poetic performance and considers the Divan manuscripts’ active engagement in this performance context. Chapter two establishes the first Divan of Hafiz to pair Hafiz’s ghazals with visual imagery. Copied on recycled Chinese papers, this Divan materializes aesthetic principles expressed by the poetry and writings on the visual arts. Chapters three and four examine the earliest paintings to be included in Hafiz’s Divan. Familiar and seemingly repetitive, these paintings draw their rules and methods of production from poetry and exemplify the interconnections of word and image. Chapter five analyzes paintings from the dispersed Safavid Divan of Hafiz (ca.1530) in light of the visual and verbal allusions from other manuscripts circulating in the same court context. This manuscript represents concepts of image making and creativity as they stem from the Persian poetic tradition and therefore demonstrates the combined representational potential of the visual and verbal arts.
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2018
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International