Conclusion

Summary

The 1953 coup d’état arranged by the United States led to the increasing American presence in Iran. To win the cultural fight against the Soviet influence in Iran, the US felt the need to take some measures in cultural diplomacy. The establishment of the Tehran office of Franklin Book Programs, Inc. in 1954 was one such measure. Franklin/Tehran's main focus was on assisting the publication of translations of US books into Persian. In twenty-five years of activity in Iran, from 1954 to 1979, it published about eight hundred books, including an edition of Whitman's poems. This bilingual edition, translated into Persian by Cyrus Parham (1928–) and published in 1960, is the first book length translation of Whitman published in Iran. It was the third and last book in a series entitled “New World Poetry Series”. The volume provides the reader with a twelve-page introduction by the translator on Whitman's biography and thirty-four poems. Franklin/Tehran's publication of this volume along with two others on Robert Frost and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow introduced Whitman as an American classic writer.

The Fulbright Program was among the programmes that contributed to the increasing cultural presence of the US in Iran with long-standing effects. American professors were present at the English literature departments at almost all the major Iranian universities. For instance, Willis Wager (1911–1991), professor of Humanities at Boston University, performed as visiting Fullbright lecturer in Iran during 1968–1970. He taught courses on American literature in Iranian universities. Some of the materials studied in those courses were made available through the USIS and the Abraham Lincoln Library. Believing that the conventional readings of the American literature have by no means exhausted the meanings of those works, he edited a thin volume out of the essays by Iranian students as their response to different periods and figures in American literature. The contributors include his senior undergraduate students at the University of Tehran and National University during the academic year 1968–1969. Arranged in a roughly chronological order of their subject, the essays are devided into three sections: late nineteenth century, early twentieth century, and late twentieth century. The first section was the bulkiest with nine essays, out of which five concerned Whitman, mostly its Persianism.