The love lyric (ghazal) of the Middle East has been central to Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu traditions. It has also had, since the time of the Troubadours, a strong influence on European conceptions of love and love lyric. This course will give special attention to the "remembrance of the beloved" as a cross-cultural symbol from medieval Andalusia to India. Poems will be read in modern English translations. We will follow the love lyric as it moves across several cross-cultural genres. Special attention will be given to the relationship of imitatio to creativity and intercultural competition in poetic love-poetry, and to the often deliberately obscured relationship between sacred and profane love. Students with knowledge of one of the original languages will be encouraged to translate a love poem or ghazal. At the end of the course, each student will be encouraged to compose a "contemporary American ghazal." (These exercises will not be graded, but credit will be given for particularly strong performances). The Bosnian Love-Lyric, which draws simultaneously upon Slavic, Arabic, Turkish, and Persian models will be read as an example of the dynamic interaction among the various ghazal traditions.

A central problem of interpretation will be the line between sacred and profane love, and the way the poetic traditions deliberately blur that line; the relationship of poetry to mystical inspiration and sanctity; and the poetic tradition as a "counter text" to the Biblical and Qur'anic discourses.

Required Readings:

• Jarsolav Stetkevych, Zephyrs of Najd: the Poetics of Nostalgia
• Michael Sells, Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes
• Peter Cole, translator, Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid
• Raymond Scheindlin, Translator, Wine, Women, and Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life
• Elizabeth Gray, The Green Sea of Heaven (translations of Hafez's Persian Ghazals)
• Michael Sells, Stations of Desire: Love Elegies from Ibn `Arabi and New Poems
• Walter Andrews, Najaat Black (Dana Bates) and Mehmet Kalpakli, Ottoman Lyric Poetry
• Paul Losensky, Welcoming Fighani

M. Sells, ed., Translations of Desire: Love-Lyric and Boundaries of the Sacred: Essays by Seemi Bushra Ghazi (Urdu Ghazal); Paul Losensky (Persian Ghazal);Walter Feldman (Ottoman Ghazal); Amila Buturovic (Bosnian Love-Lyric); Ray Scheindlin (Hebrew Love Lyric) and M. Sells (Arabic Love-Lyric)

Recommended Books, Some Selections Required

• Aijaz Ahmad, The Ghazals of Ghalib.
• James Bellamy, Al-Khansa'
• A.J. Arberry, Classical Persian Poetry
• S. Stetkevych, Reorientations: Arabic and Persian Poetry
• Th. Emil Homerin, Arab Poet to Muslim Saint
• R. Scheindlin, The Gazelle: Medieval Hebrew Poems on God, Israel, and the Soul
• R. Brann, The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew poetry in Muslim Spain
• Walter G. Andrews, Poetry's Voice, Society's Song; Ottoman Lyric Poetry
• Menocal, Scheindlin, and Sells, eds., Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, al-Andalus (Andalus)
• Agha Shahid Ali, ed. , Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English

Requirements: Regular attendance and constructive participation, 3 4 page paers, and a final paper (15-20pages) on a topic of the student's choice, to be worked out in consultation with the instructor.

25 January	Hafiz	Persian Literature 1: 4-40; Hafiz, Jamshid's Cup
27 January	Hafiz	Persian Literature 9:161-178, 214-225, Hafiz 3 Odes
29 January	Hafiz	Green Sea of Heaven
31 January	Hafiz, Baba Fighani	Green Sea of Heaven
01 February	Hafiz, Amir Khusrau, Jami	Green Sea of Heaven, Welcoming Baba Fighani
06 February	Amir Khusrau, Jami, Baba Fighani	Welcoming Baba Fighani
08 February	Amir Khusrau, Jami, Baba Fighani	Welcoming Baba Fighani
13 February	Amir Khusrau, Jami, Fighani, Rumi	Welcoming Baba Fighani
18 February	Koushkani, Ghazi, Hamin: Rumi, Hafiz	Sunday Persian Music and Poetry Concert