Machine summary:
By analyzing some of the cultural manifestations in postrevolutionary society, the paper argues that elements of the new intellectual discourse include a critical reclamation of a Persian-Islamic past as well as an interpenetration with a western civilizational heritage.
The paper first examines cultural manifestations in postrevolutionary Iran in terms of recent publications, especially dictionaries, given the centrality of language and meaning in articulating the emerging discourse.
The centrality of dictionary writing, a publication boom, and other cultural manifestations in postrevolutionary Iran suggest that the period in question is giving rise to new discourses.
The proliferation of dictionaries and encyclopedic glossaries of such works as the Shahnameh (the 65,000 verse epic poem [regarded as] the archive of the Persian national culture) and the Avesta ( the sacred book of Zoroastrian Persia) suggest that, in addition to being the repository of language and a cultural past, such publications could also be viewed as capillaries of consciousness for the reclamation and reconstruction of national identity.
Reflecting what could be termed a self-evolving project for the reclamation of national culture, including Iran's pre-Islamic past, is a bibliography of the Shahnameh" that traces its heroes' names to the Avesta, an interest also reflected in the Dictionary of Mythology and Symbolic Stories in Persian Luerature.
In drawing upon condensations of the West's civilizational experience in the wellspring of a Persian-Islamic culture, discourses in postrevolutionary Iran reflect a broader universal appeal than in other parts of the Muslim world on the plane of literate intellectual culture.