No Shaykh, No Slave: Anti-Structure and Egalitarian Mysticism in Tahirih’s Liminal Poetics

Abstract

This paper argues against the inclusion of the translation of works of literature in the commonly theorized model of semantic transferal from the source text to the target text and for the role of the title in the complex structure of the literary work of art. Works of literature – including their titles – are by their nature polysemic. One of the terminological deficiencies of English literary scholarship is the lack of a term for the “hidden meanings” of a literary text. Unfortunately, the use of the word “sense” by Frank Kermode has not become accepted, nor has the key role of the title and also the ending of a work been sufficiently recognized in English literary scholarship. The function of the title in creating “hidden meanings” resists generalization, yet the issue of translating the title has not received deserved attention, although it is central to the work of analysis of the text that the translator must undertake.