The challenges of writing Kurdish literary history: Representation, classification, periodisation

Abstract

Writing Kurdish literary history, that is a historical account of the development of Kurdish literature, is a fairly new project. Literary critics have strived to construct a comprehensive narrative of the evolution of poetry and prose and to classify individual works into certain schools and movements. Doing so, however, has proved to be a challenging task for Kurdish literature predominantly due to the lack of adequate knowledge of classical, and even contemporary, literature as a consequence of sizeable unpublished or lost manuscripts. In fact, the scarcity of knowledge on classical literature has left critics with a fragmented and episodic picture of Kurdish literary history. In this article I evaluate Kurdish literary historiography in the light of the scarcity of information and examine its ideological foundation and methodological problems. I discuss the significance of collecting, editing and publishing documents and manuscripts as a crucial step in rewriting Kurdish literary history and the way this might change our understanding of Kurdish literature.