Research: A historical reading of Anvari's divān. Addressees and manuscript tradition of the work of a 12th-century Persian poet.
Research title: A historical reading of Anvari's divān. Addressees and manuscript tradition of the work of a 12th-century Persian poet.
Supervisor: professor Paola Orsatti, La Sapienza University, Rome
Correlator: professor Daniela Meneghini, Ca' Foscari University, Venice
The project aims to produce a study of Owḥad al-din Anvari's panegyrics from both a historical and a literary point of view. This author celebrates in his poems both well-known figures of his age and people who are sometimes known only by a few mentions in historical chornicles. These compositions can thus be considered a valuable source of information on a complex historical period, the end of Sanjar's reign and the disintegration of the Seljuk empire. The aim of this project is to analyze Anvari's poems in order to: 1) Establish who the addressee of each composition truly was 2) Reconstruct the poet's relationship both with his various patrons and with the political situation he lived in 3) Study the divān as a whole, trying to understand how Anvari adapted his art to each specific addressee.