Gender in the Language, the Folklore, the Landscape

This chapter gives an overview of gender-related themes in Iran’s cultural heritage. These themes include gender-related meanings of words, spaces, or popular superstitions, which reflect women’s experience in a historically insecure environment. The chapter highlights aspects of the thousand-year-long heritage of poetry by women. Its section on “the people’s heroes of romantic liberty” examines women’s roles in some of Persia’s greatest literary classics, such as the Shahnama, Vis and Ramin, Shirin and Khosrow, or Shahrazad’sShahrazad Thousand and One Nights. These ever-popular legends illustrate the power of women’s dreams in shaping Persia’s culture, values, and imagination.