33 pages • 1 hour read
Farid ud-Din AttarThe Conference of the Birds
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Essay Topics
Why do you think the poem is structured the way it is? How would a different translation alter one’s reading of the poem (for example, if the poem was not translated in rhyming couplets)? How would this change your reading of the poem, particularly your ability to distinguish between the speaker in the story and the author of the poem? Why are heroic couplets used in a poem that is essentially about breaking social conventions?
Attar uses the poetic device of anaphora, the repetition of a word or phrase over a few lines or passages, consistently throughout The Conference of the Birds. How is this device employed in each of the passages? How does Attar’s use of anaphora affect the passage where it appears, the story it appears in, and/or the poem as a whole?
Many kings are evaluated throughout the poem. Some are named, like King Solomon and King Mahmoud, some are anonymous kings, and sometimes the idea of the king is used as a figurative description of power. What is the significance of the king in this poem? How would you characterize Attar’s presentations of political power?
The poet (Attar) and the hoopoe are often interchangeable. What is the impact of this narrative choice? Using characterizations of the hoopoe, evaluate what you imagine Attar thinks about the intersection of leadership and storytelling.
Readers acquainted with medieval European literature will recognize elements of tone and technique similar to other medieval epic poems. Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, for instance, is a poem bound together by the convention of a pilgrimage and presents a commentary of contemporary society. Dante’s Divine Comedy is a religious allegory that leads from the secular to the divine. Why do you think the combination of both narrative structures is found in The Conference of the Birds? Why is this significant in medieval Persia, in particular?
The questioning of social and religious convention are key to this poem. How does Attar revise the definitions of “scandal” and “blasphemy” throughout this text?
Many of the stories that accompany the hoopoe’s answers are deliberately obscure in order to make the reader engage with the text, rather than be given an answer. Choose a story that seems incomprehensible in isolation, then trace how its context, both the question it is supposed to answer and the stories that surround it, clarifies and deepens its meaning.
Islam rejects the worship of idols, and Attar displays a fixation with idolatry throughout the poem. In Sufism, however, the primary idol that must be destroyed is the Self. How would you define the Self in this poem, and what is left when it is destroyed? What do you think is the intersection between selfhood and idolatry?
The majority of The Conference of the Birds is dialogue, and the action of the poem does not occur until the final lines. Why might Attar have structured his poem this way? Does it intersect with any themes present in the poem, or do any characteristics of Sufism come to mind?
