From Word to World: Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, Iqbal, and the Limits of Formalism

Abstract The Urdu literary critic Shamsur Rahman Faruqi (1935–2020) favored a formalist style of literary criticism, and applied it productively to the reading of major Urdu poets like Mīr and Ġhālib. Despite its formidable success, Faruqi’s approach had certain limitations in some cases. This article examines some of these limitations in the context of Faruqi’s writings on the poet Muḥammad Iqbāl, and in doing so explores more generally the analytical as well as political limits of the non-cognitivist assumptions of formalism when applied to certain modalities of reading, writing and understanding Persian and Urdu poetry. It thus makes the case for more flexible and pluralistic models of literary criticism that can better understand and accommodate multiple ways of apprehending Persian and Urdu poetry, including those which treat poetry as a possible source of knowledge, truth, and ethical guidance.