Intertextual aspects in two verse romances in Persian Middle Ages: Gorgāni’s Vis and Rāmin (11th cent.) and Khwāju Kermāni’s Homāy and Homāyun (14th cent.)

This article investigates the permanence of topoi and narrative elements of the Persian verse romance Vis and Rāmin by Gorgāni (11th cent.) in the later Homāy and Homāyun by Khwāju Kermāni (14th cent.). The research focuses on intertextual aspects, but will not concentrate on the many Gorganian elements that, through the mediation of Neẓāmi - the author of a famous “Quintet” (khamseh) of epic-romantic poems of the XII-XIII centuries - penetrate in Khwāju’s Homāy and Homāyun; it will rather focus on common elements between the Gorgāni’s and Khwāju’s works that have not been mediated by the work of Neẓāmi. In this latter direction, on which the article focuses most, are analyzed in particular, among the many elements of intertextuality: the pretext of the disease by the male protagonist to escape from battle or hunting in order to join his beloved; the ways of falling in love with the female protagonist; the segregation of the heroine; the lover’s apostrophe to snow and wind; the ways of the love call (for example, the serenade of the lover at the window of the beloved).