The Divining Reader: A Construct Based on the Bibliomantic Approach to Hafez’s Divan

Abstract

Hafez Shirazi was a distinguished Persian poet. His poetry collection, Divan, is regarded as a literary work of profound significance. Iranians view this collection as something much more than poetry because it is also used for bibliomantic purposes. After studying Hafez in his social context and exploring distinctive qualities of his Divan, particularly its application as a divination tool, the present article largely aims to determine what type of reader the querent who uses Hafez’s Divan is. The answer to this question has led to the introduction of a novel reader construct in the realm of reader-oriented theories. Divining reader is the term I use to refer to the reader who consults Hafez’s poetry collection as a bibliomantic text so as to solve a problem or find an answer to a question. The divining reader has eighteen identifying characteristics, one of which is the willing unframing of disbelief, referring to the fact that the reader first unframes whatever disbelieving and then reframes the unframed disbelief into a belief.