The Poetics of Spiritual Instruction

Examines ʿAttar's didactic sufi poetry in historical context from a rhetorical, recipient-centred perspective

• Provides an accessible introduction to the didactic mode in Persian literature
• Uncovers a poetics of didacticism that was never systemtised in the rhetorical or philosophical tradition
• Traces the implications of the ‘medicinal metaphor’, in which speech is likened to medicine
• Explores literary allegory's relationship to visionary experience
• Investigates how didactic texts evoke oral discourse and how ʿAttar's frame-tale structures mediate between textuality and orality

Much Persian sufi literature is explicitly didactic, aiming to instruct its readers and motivate pious reform. Moving beyond a recapitulation of religious content, The Poetics of Spiritual Instruction investigates the performative function of didactic poetry for mystical audiences, focusing in particular on the verse of Farid al-Din ʿAttar, a central figure of the tradition best known for long narrative poems imbued with edifying sufi themes. Through a series of sensitive and creative readings, O’Malley shows how ʿAttar uses frame-tales, metapoetic commentary, and allegories to think through his relationship with his readers, imagine and guide their reactions to his work, and perform his instructive authority. By teasing out this implicit, recipient-centred poetics, O’Malley recovers sufi didacticism’s participatory, interactive character and shows how the act of reading was invested with ritual significance as a spiritual exercise aimed at the purification of the soul.