Most medieval Persian lyric poems, or ghazals, combine brevity of form with dense and allusive language to meditate on love, one of the most multifaceted of human experiences. Concision and complexity — particularly in an environment where desire for another person and longing for the divine were not considered incompatible — placed the burden of interpretation on communities of readers and auditors. Mutability of signification made the ghazal into a popular form, since audiences could stretch the meanings of a poem, but may have also made it harder for readers to find common ground with one another in the text, since their interpretations of authorial intention could vary dramatically. Through a close reading of the ghazals of Busḥāq-i Aṭʿima, who transformed the lyrics of earlier canonical poets into burlesques on the theme of food, this article examines what the work of poets who attempted to reformulate the modes of ghazal verse and to provoke an unexpected emotional response in their audiences can tell us about the constitution of lyric communities in medieval Iran.
James F. White (Thu,) studied this question.