Abstract
This essay investigates the dynamics that led to the literary reception of Ernest Hemingway before the Islamic Revolution in Iran. This article deploys reception studies as a branch of Comparative Literature with a focus upon conceptions of Siegbert Salomon Prawer and the practical method of George Asselineau to unearth the ideological, political, and historical milieu that embraced Hemingway’s literary fortune in Iran. This investigation, unprecedented in the study of Iranian literature, discusses how and why Hemingway was initially received in Iran. As such, the inception of literary fortune of Ernest Hemingway in Iran is examined by the contextual features, Persian literary taste, and the translator’s incentives that paved the way for this reception. This article also uncovers the reasons for the delay in the literary reception of Hemingway in Iran and discussed why some of Hemingway’s oeuvres enjoyed recognition while others were neglected by the Iranian readership.
Highlights
Reception of a literary figure in a country other than the writer’s home country is crucial to the overall literary enquiry of that country
Comparative literature was introduced to Iran in 1940s by Fatemeh Sayah whose thesis dissertation was on Anatole France
It is so far argued that Persian literary taste favoured simplification in language and translation as a result of Constitutional Revolution, advent of journalism, need for communication and promotion of modernism, and purgation of Persian literature of Arabic, unfamiliar, and convoluted words and an attempt to release Iran from the religious tendencies advocated by the pioneers of Modern Persian prose writers who set a model for others to pursue simple language
Summary
Reception of a literary figure in a country other than the writer’s home country is crucial to the overall literary enquiry of that country. It is so far argued that Persian literary taste favoured simplification in language and translation as a result of Constitutional Revolution, advent of journalism, need for communication and promotion of modernism, and purgation of Persian literature of Arabic, unfamiliar, and convoluted words and an attempt to release Iran from the religious tendencies advocated by the pioneers of Modern Persian prose writers who set a model for others to pursue simple language. Under these circumstances, simplicity of style in Hemingway’s fiction conformed to the Persian literary taste and is welcomed within the literary circles. It advocates an unpretentious stance to delve into the most fundamental issues of man’s struggle for life, love, and aspirations
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