Introduction: Toward a Reading of Moby-Dick Beyond Tehran

Abstract

This introduction rethinks conceptions of American and Persian literatures within the global literary space. In a critique of World Literature, the chapter engages Said, Spivak, Dimock, and Dabashi in dialogue to recast the world map by transcending the East-West paradigm in literary criticism, reuniting world literatures by virtue of their particular geographies, and redefining comparative literature beyond the effects of globalization on the movements of peoples and their literatures across borders. The Parsee character Fedallah in Melville’s Moby-Dick is a messenger who travels from the margins of American literature to his Persian literary counterparts, mainly, the rural woman Mergan in Dowlatabadi’s Missing Soluch. Toward a democratic multiplicity of literary worlds, this chapter proposes that aesthetic properties are embedded in their local histories and formative geographies.