ADAB PAZHUHI
Year:2012 | Volume:5 | Issue:18|Papers Count:8

Persian poetry has been routinely divided into classic and modern. Such opposition that through emphasizing the existence of a historical discontinuity in Iran, puts aside many capabilities of Persian classic poetry and even rejects its prolific dimensions, can be studied as a discourse. The epistemological and socio-political backgrounds of this discourse, although observable in the ideas of many Iranian intellectuals, should best be traced out on the major theoretical writings of modernist poets. This article studies the discursive approaches of modernist poets, especially those of Nima, Shamloo, and Akhavan, to classic poetry and shows that these poets, in order to make firm their understandings of the nature and function of poetry, introduced a great number of strict ideas for devaluing the versatile aspects of classic poetry, negating its historical relevance, pretending it as being “some other” poetry, making multiple misconceptions, etc. Meanwhile, modernist poets, by making use of certain language strategies and aggravating the opposition between modern and classic poems, normalized the idea of the static nature of the classical poetry in a way that their presuppositions became dominant in the areas of Persian literary criticism and Iranian academic research.

Story telling is a very old tradition in all communities that has survived through the modifications brought up by the narrators of each period and time. As such, throughout history, different versions of the same story appear, and each of them, following the changes made by the story tellers, might be similar or different with the previous versions. A study of the structures of the various versions of the same story, not only helps us discover the original form, but also says many things about the interrelation between the story tellers, and the interaction between cultures. In this article, twelve versions of “The Tale of Solomon and the Man Who Was to Escape from Azrael” from Mathnavi of Mowlavi, are compared based on a structural approach. The findings prove that Mowlavi is totally aware of the forms of his stories as well as the internal and external structures of the narratives. Therefore, one has no choice but to consider Mowlavi a skillful and talented story teller.

Kalile va Demne is among the political literary works whose content has been the matter of concern for researchers who tried to prove its political aspect or determine the power relations in it. Nevertheless, this is the structure of the story that is essentially responsible for the political aspect of the work. In Kalile va Demne, this aspect is actualised through the interaction of two narrative agents, i.e., Ray and Brahman, as the representatives of the relation between State and Religion. The present article focuses on the linguistic and the narrative significations of this text to study the power relations between Ray and Brahman and to see how far this structure manifests the State/Religion pattern. This interaction is examined based on “Turn taking” and “Questioning” principles, as the two discursive patterns. The findings say that the final goal of the interaction between Ray and Brahman, apart from emphasizing the connection between State and Religion, is to show that the activity of Ray is lawful and justified.

The arising of Nouveau Roman in France was in fact a kind of deconstructing the traditional forms and principles of writing. Following this trend, a group of Iranian novelists in 1960s and 1970s stopped using the classical realistic and naturalistic representations in their works and adopted the conventions of nouveau roman. Some of these works are no more than imitations of the new conventions, but some other such as “The Sleep of Blood”, a short story by Bahram Sadeghi, due to the features like ambiguity and complexity, the important role of language, new forms of characterization, lack of any political and social commitment, incoherent and dreamful plot, and the presence of the reader in the text, are among the elevated examples of nouveau roman in Iran. This article, after introducing the major elements of this French trend, traces their manifestations in the work of Sadeghi.

One of the most important topics in Modern Hermeneutics is the idea of Open Text and its interpretable nature. In his aesthetic analysis of literary works, Eco emphasizes the existence of a code system and its interpretability, and while criticizing the “author’s intention”, believes in a dialectical relation between “text’s intention” and “reader’s intention”. Based on his formulation, although the text requires different readings, it does not give way to any sort of readings because the acceptable reading takes place when the “ideal reader” reads the text within the frameworks imposed by the very text. As such, this is the “text strategy” that determines the dimensions of interpretation of which the reader can by no means go beyond. The reader through discovering the inner-textual relations and following the extra-textual elements, begins his reading to accomplish the job already started by the “ideal author”. Text, from this perspective, is no longer a physical phenomenon, but a potentiality that will be actualized in the process of reading and interpretation.

Banu Goshasp Name is the only heroine whose character and behavior provides the material for an independent Verse Book. Among the epic verses written after Shahname, the two works named Borzoo Name and Banu Goshasp Name became prevalent in a district called Koohmarre Sorkhi. In this area, the oral narration of Banu Goshasp Name, is an integration of epic and mythological beliefs whose analysis, apart from recording an absolutely original version of this verse, reveals some aspects of traditional beliefs of this old community. This article, after introducing this oral version, examines its similarities and differences with the written version and shows the impact of the mythology on the history of this narrative.

Shahname is the manifestation of Iranian’s national identity and benefits a significance as vast as Iran’s language and culture. This article is a critical and analytic study of the first part of the third Book of Shahname, i.e. The Story of Siavosh, according to the three versions of Khaleghi Motlagh, Kazzazi, and Joveyni. The article through explaining the methods used in each version, and comparing the explanation of the verse, demonstrates that each version has committed certain errors. In other words, we have tried to prove that the very work of interpreting Shahname and explaining its verses, the same as interpreting the Ghazals of Hafiz, is a never-ending task. Meanwhile, some criticisms about the reliable expositions on Shahname, specifically the meticulous one belonging to Khaleghi are presented.