The Caucasus as World Literature

Rebecca Gould (University of Bristol)

The literatures of the Caucasus comprise one of the most multilingual, yet least understood, literary traditions within world literature. Among the languages that feature in its literary landscape are Persian, Arabic, multiple Turkic languages, Russian, Georgian, Armenian, and countless vernaculars with both ancient and modern literary traditions. In this presentation, Gould moves from twelfth century Persianate Azerbaijan to twentieth century Soviet Georgia in an effort to better understand the themes, genres, and cultural contexts that link the literatures of this region. In particular, she brings the prison poetry of the twelfth century poetry Khaqani Shirvani into conversation with the anticolonial aesthetics of the Georgian poet Titsian Tabidze (d. 1937) to examine how these writers used poetry to engage with the politics of Christian-Muslim difference on imperial borderlands. Both under Saljuq and Soviet rule, the literatures of the Caucasus elaborate a unique account of the poet’s vatic utterance and of poetry’s capacity for political critique. This presentation brings together strands from Gould’s forthcoming book on the Caucasus literatures of anticolonial insurgency ( Writers and Rebels , Yale UP, 2016 ) with her book-in-progress on the genre of classical Persian prison poetry ( habsiyyat ).