“Worlds Together Shined”: Bīdil, Traherne, and Collaborative Comparison

Abstract

AbstractAt the same moment in the seventeenth century in two distant parts of the globe, two poets who did not know of each other's existence both confronted an ancient philosophical question—How does human knowledge begin?—by imaginatively reconstructing their own originary experiences. In poetry and autobiographical prose, Thomas Traherne (in England) and Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Qādir Bīdil Dihlavī (in India) describe being in the womb, birth, nursing, first thoughts. Deeply original with respect to their own contexts yet strikingly similar to each other, these accounts demand comparison. In this essay, we draw on Carlo Ginzburg's concept of “conjunctive anomalies,” Bruce Lincoln's “weak” comparison, and Roland Greene's “obversive poetics,” among other frameworks, to reveal the overlooked early modern world of Avicennan thought. By collaboratively comparing traditions that do not fully belong to either of us, we attempt to dislodge the siloed ways of thinking that have come to structure the study of early modern literatures.