Concept

Extreme Ugliness as a Pity Upon Hell's Fire: Hyperbolic Satire in Jami's Baharestan (Section 15)

This concept abstracts the central literary device of Section 15. An ugly-faced man begs to be spared Hell's fire, and a bystander inverts the plea with witty exaggeration: the man's face is so repellent that casting him into the fire would wrong the fire itself, not the man. The device works by reversing the normal relation between sinner and punishment — the punishment, not the punished, becomes the injured party. It illustrates Jami's use of comic hyperbole (hazl) in the Baharestan's cluster of anecdotes on physical ugliness, where an exaggerated defect is turned into a vehicle for moral and rhetorical wit rather than literal condemnation. Understanding this inversion is what lets a learner read the closing verses as satire rather than sincere theology.

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Updated 2026-07-20

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Humanities

Literature

Persian Literature Prerequisite Course