This handbook comprehensively covers the rich tradition of literary devices in Persian language and literature. It establishes an incontrovertible connection between literary devices - figurative language, rhetoric, and so on - and pedagogy and poetics in both written and oral expression. This volume offers a detailed and thorough overview of these all-important literary devices and their dynamics, creating a literary powerhouse in the Persian-speaking world in both historical and contemporary terms. The handbook carves out a space dedicated to colloquialisms and idioms, as they are interwoven into the fabric of Persian culture, within the larger field of rhetoric. These devices are fostered and furthered in their potency, both culturally and linguistically, by the poets, writers, and rhetoricians who utilize them. The poetical hermeneutics and the long tradition of interpretative work on Persian literary works comprises an important part of the work. Herein is established a culture and history in texts and oral history that point to a culturally tailored complexity as per figurative language, idioms, colloquialisms, and the rhetoric they help found and/or re-define.  This historical analysis of both classical and modern rhetorical expressions, metaphors, similes, hyperbole, and other literary devices enables an understanding of the epistemological and cultural meaning of what constitute Persian identity in the Persian-speaking world, and beyond. This compendious work is a must-have on the shelves of scholars and students studying Persian, Arabic, and/or European literary studies and linguistics, as well as those working in Persian language instruction, Middle Eastern history and cultural studies.  

Alireza Korangy received his PhD from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. His field of research is classical Persian and Arabic philology with a special emphasis on poetics, rhetoric, folklore and linguistics. 

Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi is a literary translator and Instructional Professor of Persian at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Processing Compound Verbs in Persian: A Psycholinguistic Approach to Complex Predicates (Leiden University Press 2014) and Translation Metacognitive Strategies (VDM Verlag 2009), and editor or co-editor of several volumes, including The Oxford Handbook of Persian Linguistics (2018), The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy of Persian (2020), The Routledge Handbook of Persian Literary Translation (2022), and The Art of Teaching Persian Literature: From Theory to Practice (Brill 2024).

Azadeh Vatanpour is a Ph.D.  (ABD) candidate at Emory University. She holds an MA in Ancient Iranian Culture and Languages from Shiraz University, an MA in Folk Studies, and an MA in Religious Studies from Western Kentucky University. As a scholar of religion and minority studies, her research focuses on ethno-religious minority groups in the Middle East, particularly among the Yarsan community. Vatanpour is currently working on Essays on Gurani Literature, Edited Volume with Dr. Alireza Korangy, delving into the extensive repertoire of literature written in the Gurani language by various ethno-religious groups residing in the Zagros region. She is the Director of the Program of Persian Studies at University of Austin.