The Poetics of the “Book of Travel” (“Safar-Nameh”) in Iranian Literature of the 19th — Early 20th Century

In this study the authors for the first time examine the evolution in the 19th – early 20th century of the safar-nameh genre – Iranian travel accounts. Widely in demand since the Middle Ages and having witnessed its heyday at the end of the century, by the middle of the 20th century this genre had been completely displaced from book circulation. The source base of the article is formed with the texts that have not been used yet as an object of philological analysis in either foreign or Russian Iranian studies. Meanwhile, being the most significant and voluminous works of this genre, they create wider opportunities for authors’ conclusions and generalizations. The analysis of these travel accounts made it possible to trace the process of gradual genre transformation and demonstrate specific mechanisms of change in the constitutive features of safar-nameh, quite clearly defined in the literary canon. Continuing to play the role of a “school” within which the mastery of storytelling and the basic structural principles of text organization were honed, the canon paved the way for the formation of narrative principles that are different from the classical model and are characteristic of modern plot-based narration. The fluidity of the genre specificity of safar-nameh serves as an example of the changes that traditional Iranian literature undergoes in this period.