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Н.Ю. Чалисова. Жанр «ученого трактата» в персидской классической прозе (к постановке вопроса)
The textualization of knowledge has produced numerous texts in Persian. These scholarly treatises (on astronomy and algebra, pharmacology and plant science, Sufi teachings and art of poetry, and so on) are undoubtedly among the most revealing testimonies to the medieval culture of Iran. The problem of their inclusion in the domain of literature is under discussion in the first part of the article. From the point of view of their main function those works mostly fall into the category of informational and directive texts and thus (when viewed in the modern Western perspective) can be only considered as non-literature. In the authoritative “histories of Persian literature” some treatises are discussed in the “Prose of the period” sections, with a focus on the content of the given book and its status, and without any special mention of its generic features. However, the tradition of composing treatises eventually developed a set of characteristics and conventions of textualization which could be considered as literary (elaborate and in some cases embellished language; narrative interpolations, stories, anecdotes, poems; rhetorical technique of discourse; compositional structure in relation to a certain topic). When seen in the pre-modern Iranian perspective, the “expository” treatises regardless of their literary merits become a part of classical Adabiyyāt and form the very basis of refined education (adab). The topics exposed in treatises provided “educated” Persian poetry with clusteres of “technical” imagery, and the patterns of scholarly reasoning found their counterpart in the poetic argumentation. In the second part of the article the hermeneutical use of the treatises is under discussion. The popular calligraphic imagery serves as a good example here, as many poetic circumlocutions find their explanation in the treatises on calligraphy. The expository texts are by no means detached from the high literature; and what is more they prove important for our better understanding of “presentational” genres of poetry and prose. Attachment to the article includes a translation of a small textbook on calligraphy by Halil Tabrizi (16th cent.).