Acceso usuarios
Natalia Tornesello
Abstract Over the past half century, Iran has undergone profound and rapid changes in its social and cultural life. Literature, as a reflection of the attitudes, values, issues and ways of thinking of each era, is one of the main tools for understanding a culture or society. Contemporary Persian literature, as a product of and testimony to Iranian society, can be seen as a lens held to the historical, political and cultural reality, the daily life of the people and the constant internal forces of transformation. The aim of this special issue of Oriente Moderno entitled Contemporary Iranian Society Through its Literature is to take stock of the new trends in Persian literature, which result from painstaking processes of thematic, stylistic and linguistic reworking in relation to the events of modern history. The aim is to offer a glimpse of contemporary Iran through its literary production, as well as its cultural and publishing dynamics. The starting point is the awareness that literature can be representation, testimony, denunciation, a place of comfort, analysis, confrontation, recomposition and intimate experience, and that writers draw on these possibilities in setting out new cartographies and paths of meaning, in formulating questions that, in the current lacerating times, indicate pathways and build bridges. The topics covered include themes such as the torment and anguish that mark the present times, the limitation of individual freedoms, the issues of state control over publications, the desire to reflect Iranian society through women’s voices and the use of the true living language. The continuity with the classical tradition is also emphasized.
