Title: Development of the ghazal and Khaqani's contribution
Description: The subject of my recent dissertation is the point at which the poetry of Afzal al-Din Khaqani Shirvani (12th c.) changed the face of Persian ode, ghazal , in Iran, thematically and linguistically. My dissertation reveals that despite his enigmatic use of language, there is a logical poetic functionality that results in one of the richest, but as yet least studied bodies of philological work in the history of Persian poetry. The relationship of poetics to the musicality that prevailed in Khaqani's ghazals required a new kind of objective analysis. This objective approach, on every level, was based on the similarities and also the differences that exist between Khaqani's work and that of his predecessors. Therefore, his modus operandi was approached in terms of historical influences; linguistics and poetics; and religion and philosophy. To highlight the function of the ghazal as a distinct poetic entity, this study also treats the proto-ghazal of older Arabic verse, which evolved from a pre-existing oral tradition later known as Jahiliya poetry. In this part of my study, the significant roles played by figurative language, prosody, and social settings are analyze and retraced. These were the crucial elements that later served as stimulants for the creation of a new poetic language (ghazal) and the subtle recurrence of themes. This aspect of the study revealed a greater maturity in the works of the Jahiliya poets than had previously been believed.

The second phase of this study is an analytical thematic and linguistic study of nine poets from the same literary period as Khaqani. With the onslaught of the twelfth century and the mystic themes that had found their way into its poetic production, several new issues arose. Mystical motifs appeared in their rhetorical discourse as a means of expressing ideas that were essentially ornamental. For this reason, the twelfth-century ghazal lexicon is, at times, inappropriate for the themes that it expresses. In terms of ghazal poetry, this dissertation demonstrated that this period (12th c.) served as the philosophical beginning for the final stage of experimentation, and Khaqani was its most devoted patron.