Adab Colloquium with Presenter Domenico Ingenito, UCLA and Discussant Sayeh Meisami, University of Dayton

Domenico Ingenito will discuss the sixth chapter of his new book, Beholding Beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry (Brill, 2020). This presentation explores the influence of Ibn Sinā’s theories of imagination on the development of Persian lyric poetry during the 13th century CE. By analyzing the role of the internal senses in the construction of Sa’di Shirazi’s lyric subject, Ingenito’s approach challenges the traditional hermeneutical dichotomy between mystical and secular poetry and aims to shed new light on the centrality of the realm of vision in key intellectual and spiritual discourses that blossomed during the Ilkhanid period.