Książka prof. Anny Krasnowolskiej to zbiór 5 wykładów, które zaprezentowała w 2010 r. w Collège de France w Paryżu. Na okładce książki możemy przeczytać...

"This volume contains the text of the five Ehsan and Latifeh Yarshater Distinguished Lectures on Iranian Studies, organized by the Unité Mixte de Recherche 7528 "Mondes iranien et indien", and delivered in 2010 at the Collège de France in Paris.

The series of lectures brings together numerous data illustrating the confluence of mythological, folkloric and literary themes of Iranian culture, and their continuity from pre-Islamic till present times. This interaction between the classical and popular, oral and written traditions, still little invastigated, is being examinated on the examples of five motifs: Kākil, the hero of a winter festival; a spell against scorpions; the rose and the nightingle; a symbolical dream of the wise king Xusrō Anōširvān; and the eschatological saviour and his horse. The study is conducted in a dischronic perspective, and its sources range from the Avesta and Pahlavi texts through the Šāhnāme and classical Persian literature, up to modern Persian novel and research on popular customs and beliefs".