The Subtle Meaning. An Outline of Persian ʿilm-i maʿānī

How does syntax interact with context to convey subtle meanings beyond expectations? A branch of the Arabic-Islamic study of rhetoric (balāġat) known as ‘the science of meanings’ (ʿilm-i maʿānī) discusses this point. This discipline studies the appropriateness of an utterance and its parts to the speaker’s intent and the context in which the utterance is used. Although some of its findings are similar to those of pragmatics and semantics, its domain does not fully overlap with any Western categories. This book examines the Persian science of meanings as expressed in a selection of textbooks published in Iran over the last hundred years. It consists of 11 chapters and a bibliography. Chapter 1 provides a historical background, a review of sources and secondary literature, and the aims and scope of the study. Chapter 2 introduces and clarifies the meanings of certain notable terms commonly used in Persian textbooks. The general organisation of the discipline, which is traditionally divided into eight parts, is also discussed. Chapters 3 to 10 each address one of these eight domains. Chapter 11 draws some conclusions, includes a tentative evaluation of the merits and limits of maʿānī in analysing classical Persian poetry, and discusses the relation of the Persian discipline with the Arabic model. It offers insights into how the Arabic model was adapted to Persian and eventually transformed into a literary theory of how Persian poets made the best use of syntactical possibilities. With its comprehensive account of the contents of the Persian science of meanings, a clarification of this field’s jargon, and comments on dozens of examples taken mainly from classical Persian poetry, this monograph will interest graduate students and researchers working on Persian poetry, Arabic-Islamic rhetoric, and literary theory.