The Poetics of Spiritual Instruction : Farid al-Din ?Attar and Persian Sufi Didacticism

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 ?Attar, 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 ?Attar 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.