Seminar on satire in Persian literature currently underway in Delhi
Famous scholars and Persian literature experts from Iran, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and India are participating in the seminar.
Nargis Jahan, the head of the Persian Department of the University of Delhi, said in a lecture that Persian literature like other literature is full of various styles of humor which make the reader or listener smile or even ponder.
Ferdowsi’s satirization of Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi in the Shahnameh is one example, she added.
The book "History of Beihaqi" by the renowned Iranian writer and historian Abolfazl ibn Hossein of the Ghaznavid era (about 962-1186) also contains many satirical parts.
Iran’s cultural attache in India also explained the differences between good and bad humor, and critical humor and triteness in Persian literature, adding that disrespectful derogatory remarks and mocking are regarded as unacceptable, even if they make one happy.
Joking is a type of mocking and the colonizers are promoting it in order to humiliate various nations and ethnic groups, Morteza Shafiei Shakib added.
He noted that the kind of humor observed in the poetry of Hafez and Sadi has the spirit of constructive criticism.
He also paid tribute to the late satirist Kiumars Saberi saying that his magazine “Gol-Aqa” was warmly received by the people.
“If there was a difference between jokes and satire in Western literature and if they observed morality in jokes and satire, we would not see these ugly faces as cartoons in the dailies,” he observed.
Iranian scholars Mansur Rastegar Fasaii from Shiraz University, Mohammad-Jafar Yahaqi from Ferdowsi University, Abolqassem Radfar from the Human Science Research Center, and Maryam Khalili from Sistan-Baluchestan University are participating in the seminar, which is being cosponsored by the Iranian Culture House in Delhi and the Persian Department of Delhi University.
The three-day seminar ends today.