The Persian Face of Edgar Allan Poe

Abstract This article examines the reception of Edgar Allan Poe in modern Persian literature with regard to his fiction and theory of writing. There have been scattered pieces written on Poe’s influence on Iranian poets and writers in Persian or English, but this article aims to offer a fairly comprehensive picture of Poe in Iran in general with a focus on his influence or affinities with two leading Iranian authors, Sadeq Hedayat and Sadeq Chubak, as far as female characters are concerned. The article at first surveys how Poe was introduced into Persian literature and then it studies personal, social, political, and historical backgrounds in classical and modern Persian literature that determined men’s taking a misogynous approach. A comparative study of representative works of Hedayat and Chubak reveals conscious alignment with Poe’s ideas. Confessionary monologues, gloomy atmosphere, and the lack of proper dialogues between men and women mark their writings. The article concludes that although patriarchy has been responsible for these two writers’ failures to overcome gender stereotypes, their acquaintance with Edgar Allan Poe had its impact on aggravating such tendencies.