For the past few years, scholars of Middle Eastern literary studies have adopted “conceptual approaches” that examine shifting semantic meanings of terms that held significant importance in diverse Islamicate traditions, such as adab (often translated as “literature”) and balāgha (often translated as “rhetoric” or “poetics”). For example, the Middle East Studies Association 2025 Annual Meeting held two sessions entitled “Middle Eastern Philology”; PMLA (Publications of the Modern Language Association) has just published a special issue on the Arabic theoretical lexicon that includes concepts such as tarjama (often translated as “translation”); and the journal Middle Eastern Literatures has a forthcoming issue entitled “Conceptual Approaches to the Late Ottoman Literary Field.” All these works emphasize that Middle Eastern texts are not merely objects that serve as windows into their respective societies. Rather, they also can contribute to theoretical discussions that transform larger debates in literary studies. These works challenge theoretical scholarship in the humanities, which still significantly draws upon Western European and Anglo-American literatures.

Arabic, Persian, and Turkic Poetics: Towards a Post-Eurocentric Literary Theory, edited by Hany Rashwan, Rebecca Ruth Gould, and Nasrin Askari, steps squarely into these emerging debates and steers them in new directions. Many contemporary literary studies aim to situate texts within the immediate political and historical context in which they are produced—a tendency, as Haifa Alfaisal notes in this edited volume, that was partly popularized by nahḍa authors who drew upon the European episteme as they approached Arabic literary heritage. As a result many of us become specialists of works from well-defined historical periods, such as Abbasid poetry or late Ottoman literature. This edited volume draws attention to literary theory as the context for understanding these texts (Gould). Theory is not something that critics may opt to apply or not when they analyze texts; rather, the volume claims that it is the indispensable context, more essential than historical or political context, that one needs to understand the literary traditions we analyze. That is why, for example, the rich work on balāgha from premodern times can shed a light on modern works from Najib Surur (1932–1978) (Fontana). Furthermore, we should not study balāgha solely for understanding Turkish, Arabic, or Persian texts. We can study terms such as balāgha to also propose new scholarly approaches in literary studies. For example, Aişe Handan Konar draws upon the Ottoman use of tetebbuʿ, which designates a poet’s in-depth examination of another poet’s oeuvre or composition of a parallel poem to a work within that oeuvre. She ultimately proposes a new methodological approach when calling for engaging with the writers of tezkire works, that is, biographical dictionaries of poets: “We have no better way than to follow the tezkire writers’ footsteps” (212). In other words, tetebbuʿ can inspire a new approach that cautions literary critics to avoid imposing their preconceived notions on the authors they study and instead become more attuned to these authors and “follow in their footsteps.”

Some chapters examine the shifting meanings of a single term, such as balāgha, across centuries (Rashwan); others undertake a similar conceptual approach as they examine the use of a particular term in works of a single author, such as Ahmad Ahsaʾi (1166–1241/1753–1826) (Lawson) or even a single text such as Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih’s (d. 328/940) al-ʿIqd al-Farid (Jones). The volume also includes chapters with a rich analysis of literary works from authors including Ibn Hamdis (d. c. 1133) (Carpentieri), Majd al-Din b. Ahmad Hamgar (607–686/1210–1287) (Seyed-Gohrab), and Şeyh Galib (d. 1213/1799) (Açıl). All these chapters serve to reassure those who think that conceptual approaches in Middle Eastern literary studies will inevitably cause a decline in scholarly works that analyze poems and novels, just as the rise of critical theory in the humanities has been associated with a declining interest in literature itself. Another key goal of the volume is to challenge habituation to translation of certain terms, such as rendering īhām as “pun” (Chalisova, 137). When translators and commentators like Avicenna (d. 429/1037) and Averroes (d. 595/1198) used the Arabic transliteration of Greek terms such as rīṭūrīqā (rhetoric), the epistemological foundation they drew upon was not Greek philosophy but instead Islamic jurisprudence and Arabic linguistics (El Yazghi Ezzaher).

Some chapters in the volume chart future directions for conceptual approaches in the field of Middle Eastern literatures. Most chapters in Arabic, Persian, and Turkic Poetics focus on one of the three traditions; at the same time, the importance of comparative approaches is addressed. Even specialists of Arabic, Persian, or Turkish alone can still engage with the rich repertoire of primary and secondary sources of the other two traditions. For example, Konar’s work shows the fruitful insights that emerge when scholars of Ottoman literature draw upon Riccardo Zipoli and Paul E. Losensky, who made extensive research on tetebbuʿ in the Persian context. Likewise, Marc Toutant demonstrates the complex interplay between the Turkic and Persian literary systems, drawing attention to complex hierarchies and power dynamics that shape interactions among the three traditions. The chapters also undermine Arabocentrism; for example, as Natalia Chalisova analyzes how the Arabic notions of tawriya (often translated as “concealment” or “double entendre”) or takhyīl (often translated as “setting the imagination to work”) are transformed in Persian writings, she emphasizes that this examination not only sheds light on Persian literary theory but also provides a better understanding of the Arabic terms themselves. The book undermines the Orientalist tendency to view Arabic as the source of influence that is then imitated by Persian and Turkish traditions. Any scholar who wishes to understand the use of a particular term in Arabic should pay attention to its usage and transformations in Persian and Turkish, and vice versa.

Furthermore, the volume reminds the reader that to challenge the discipline’s Eurocentrism, it is not sufficient to simply do more archival and philological research. It is also necessary to shift the paradigms used to approach sources. We cannot study sources as expressions of pure ethnolinguistic communities; we should not draw a one-to-one correspondence between linguistic traditions and the ethnolinguistic communities to which texts are assigned. For example, although Mir ʿAli Shir Nawaʾi (845–907/1441–1501) and Muhammad Zahir al-Din Babur (888–936/1483–1530) aimed to elevate Türkī (the term that authors themselves used to designate the language that is often studied as Chaghatay today) as a literary language, they did not hesitate to look up to the Persianate tradition (Toutant).

The volume likewise invites us to aspire to structural and institutional change. Eurocentrism cannot be overcome unless we create scholarly platforms—such as Arabic, Persian, and Turkic Poetics—where scholars based in diverse countries are given the chance to shape theoretical discussions in the humanities on a global scale. Otherwise, the field of world literature, while claiming to make comparative literature less Eurocentric, will continue to be confined primarily to a few well-endowed institutions in the Global North. This volume’s ability to bring together contributions from scholars based in a wide range of countries, such as Iran, Italy, Russia, Türkiye, and Saudi Arabia, is commendable and should serve as a model for humanities research.

The edited volume provides a snapshot of the field that calls for diverse perspectives on engaging with Euro-American literary theories. Many chapters put emphasis on the need to make concepts such as balāgha “speak on their own terms” without applying Western frameworks to their philologically grounded readings. These chapters also will be of interest to scholars who wish to become acquainted with a rich body of primary sources in their original language, as well as their skillful translations. Others offer alternative productive ways to apply Euro-American theories. Not all chapters call for discarding these theories or even “letting the concepts speak for themselves” per se: “Europe in our view is not a category or framework to be disregarded; rather, it is one to be transformed” (Gould, 8; emphasis Gould’s). This comprehensive edited volume includes rich engagements with a diverse range of thinkers outside the Islamicate traditions, such as Michael Halliday (Seyed-Ghasem) and Northrop Frye (Lawson). Scholars conversant with European theoretical discourses will learn that theory can be transformed rather than simply applied to Islamicate traditions.

Arabic, Persian, and Turkic Poetics, therefore, offers a diverse range of paths for literary critics who wish to overcome the discipline’s Eurocentrism. Although we all share the vision of a post-Eurocentric future, the paths toward this future are manifold. Arabic, Persian, and Turkic Poetics provides a concrete road map for this journey, bringing together scholars who share similar aspirations from different institutional, theoretical, and disciplinary backgrounds.