List of Illustration -- Acknowledgement -- A Note on Citation from the Mathnawi and the Qur'an, and Transliteration -- Introduction -- Chapter One The Bawdy Tales of the Mathnawi in the Context of Persian Mystical Poetry -- Introduction -- Bawdy Tales in Medieval Persian Mystical Literature -- The Use of Sexual Imagery in the Mathnawi -- Rumi's View of the Use of Sexual Imagery in the Mathnawi -- Chapter Two The Nexus between Esotericism and Eroticism -- Secrecy and Eroticism -- Phallocentric Esotericism in Jewish Tradition -- Jacques Lacan and the Order of Language -- The Concealed Phallus as a Signifier of Desire/Esoteric Secrets -- The Efficacy of Lacan's Theory of Signification for Engaging Mystical Texts -- Conclusion -- Chapter Three Phallocentric Esotericism in the Tale of the Slave Girl who Satisfied her Sexual Urges with her Mistress's Donkey -- Summary of the Tale -- The Instability of the Subject: A Lacanian Approach -- Textual Presentation of the Unstable Subject -- The Subjective Position of Interpretation -- Metonymy and Metaphor, Mithal and Mathal -- Fetish, Imaginary Fixation on Literalized Ideals and Symbolic Forms -- "Penis/Phallus: Same Difference" -- Raz, The "Unrepresentable" Great Mystery -- The Elixir, An Emanation from the Divine -- Conclusion -- Chapter Four The Phallus and the Subject -- Summary of the Tale of the Prankster who Donned the Veil and Sat among the Women during a Religious Gathering (Mathnawi V:3325-3350) -- Fetishistic Literalization of Symbols and The Signifier of Esoteric Secrets -- Having or Being the Phallus, Divergent Positions Within Signifying Processes -- The Veil of Masquerade -- The Subject of Bawdy and the Body of the Subject -- Knowledge of the Subject and the Subjectivity of Knowledge -- Conclusion -- Chapter Five The Hermeneutics of Eroticism -- (Phallocentric) Esotericism and Eroticism.

The Erotic Significance of the Mathnawi's Imagery -- Erotic Encounters of Different Kinds -- Androgyny, Hermaphrodite Body, and Phallic Supremacy -- Gender of Memory, Body of Secrecy -- Text as Gendered and Embodied Self -- Conclusion -- Chapter Six Visions of Esoteric Secrets in Two Miniature Paintings of the Mathnawi's Bawdy Tales -- Introduction -- "Man up a Pear Tree Who Saw His Wife and Her Lover Together" -- The Viewer as Voyeur and the Secret of the Gaze -- "The Woman Who Discovered her Maidservant Having Improper Relations with an Ass" -- The Gaze and the Phallus -- Conclusion -- Concluding Reflections -- Bibliography -- Appendix One Translation of the Tale of the Slave Girl who Satisfied her Sexual Urges with her Mistress's Donkey (Mathnawi V:1333-1429) -- Appendix Two Translation of the Tale of the Prankster who Donned the Veil and Sat among Women During a Religious Gathering (Mathnawi V:3325-3350) -- Index.