“Hafiz and His Contemporaries: Poetry, Performance and Patronage in Fourteenth Century Iran” by Dominic Parviz Brookshaw
One of the most fascinating and mysterious literary phenomena is the process by which one author, Shakespeare, Pushkin, Dante, or in this case, Hafez, comes to loom so high above all their talented and successful contemporaries. Most poetry lovers outside of Iran will not recognize the names of any of Hafez’s rivals and colleagues, and…