Abstract
This chapter examines how literature may be a representation of a society in turbulent transition, in this case of the advent of modernity to what was formerly called Persia, but which soon became the national state of Iran. It is not a study of the connection between literature and the nation-state per se, but of what and how modernizing processes more broadly, in the form of new modes of thought and ideologies in the wake of societal transition, are represented in early-modern Persian1 literature. The reading and analysis of the literary works below aims to highlight how modern rationalism intersects with religious thought, and how rationalism and its by-products, science and technology, are presented and assessed in very different ways in two literary works from the early 1920s and early 1930s.
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Pedersen, C.V. (2015). Utopia and Dystopia in Early-Modern Persian Literature: Representations of the Advent of Modernity to Iran. In: Özdalga, E., Kuzmanovic, D. (eds) Novel and Nation in the Muslim World. Islam and Nationalism Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137477583_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137477583_12
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