Episode
Julia Caterina Hartley, "Iran and French Orientalism: Persia in the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century France" (Bloomsbury. 2023)
- Podcast
- New Books in Iranian Studies
- Published
- Oct 2, 2024
- Duration seconds
- 2572
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-in-iranian-studies-6707694/episodes/julia-caterina-hartley-iran-and-french-orientalism-persia-in-the-literary-culture-of-nineteenth-century-france-bloomsbury-2023/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-iranian-studies-6707694/julia-caterina-hartley-iran-and-french-orientalism-persia-in-the-literary-culture-of-nineteenth-century-france-bloomsbury-2023.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
Today I talked to Julia Caterina Hartley about Iran and French Orientalism: Persia in the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century France (Bloomsbury. 2023). New translations of Persian literature into French, the invention of the Aryan myth, increased travel between France and Iran, and the unveiling of artefacts from ancient Susa at the Louvre Museum are among the factors that radically altered France's perception of Iran during the long nineteenth century. And this is reflected in the literary culture of the period. In an ambitious study spanning poetry, historiography, fiction, travel-writing, ballet, opera, and marionette theatre, Julia Hartley reveals the unique place that Iran held in the French literary imagination between 1829 and 1912. Iran's history and culture remained a constant source of inspiration across different generations and artistic movements, from the 'Oriental' poems of Victor Hugo to those of Anna de Noailles and Théophile Gautier's strategic citation of Persian poetry to his daughter Judith Gautier's full-blown rewriting of a Persian epic. Writing about Iran could also serve to articulate new visions of world history and religion, as was the case in the intellectual debates that took place between Michelet, Renan, and Al-Afghani. Alternatively joyous, as in Félicien David's opera Lalla Roukh, and ominous, as in Massenet's Le Mage, Iran elicited a multiplicity of treatments. This is most obvious in the travelogues of Flandin, Gobineau, Loti, Jane Dieulafoy, and Marthe Bibesco, which describe the same cities and cultural practices in altogether different ways. Under these writers' pens, Iran emerges as both an Oriental other and an alter ego, its culture elevated above that of all other Muslim nations. At times this led French writers to critique…