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Abstract:

The article is devoted to the formation of the genre of love-romance poem in Persian classical literature during the 11th–15th centuries and the role of the author in the development of the canon in the context of normative poetics. The paper highlights the stable signs (markers) of the love-romance narrative, fixed at the level of the plot, composition and set of characters, shows the stages of their accumulation in the canon. Using the example of reference texts representing each of the three selected stages of the genesis and evolution of a romance poem (Firdousi, ‘Ayyuki, ‘Unsuri, Gurgani, Nizami, Jami), the factors of distinguishing a new genre from syncretic forms of epic narrative characteristic of the period of Antiquity and the early Middle Ages are considered. The paper examines the sources of borrowing plots and ways of their adaptation in Persian classical poetry. To this end, the motives of the author’s reflection, traditionally contained in the chapters of the introduction to the poems, are analyzed. The study showed that the period of intensive accumulation of genre features occurred in the 11th century, when the first poems on love stories were composed. The article shows the role of Nizami as the author of the final phase of the formation of the canon and as a theorist of the novel narrative. His poems, recognized as exemplary, at the same time demonstrate the range of possibilities for the transformation of all components of the content and composition. Another author’s version of the realization of these possibilities is considered on the example of the love-romance poems of ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami (15th cent.).

Keywords: Persian classic poetry, love-romance poem, genre markers, literary canon, author’s originality.