The Journal of Epic Literature
Year:2011 | Volume:6 | Issue:10|Papers Count:20

Blasphemy is a keyword in Koran whose extension and concept has been greatly changed throughout history and in different areas of Islam and found different significance.In this article attempt has been made to draw and present Moulana’s beliefs and viewpoints regarding blasphemy expressed in different verbal situations and from different angles with emphasis on Masnavi Maanavi and Divan Shams.

Praise of prophets is one of the poetic themes whose main focus is the character of the prophet Mohammad (S). In this poetic genre, the poet describes the different dimensions of the prophet’s character and worships him because of his appearance, moral characteristics and speaks of his miracles and all that is in connection with his mission. This poetry has arisen from a heart which is absolutely pure and sincere and is based on a passion kindled and inspired by the belief in the prophet’s mission and love towards his humane and godlike virtues. Due to the special place this genre of poetry has in the Persian and Arabic literature the present research has attempted to make a comparative study of praise of prophets in Attar’s and Bousiri’s works in order to reflect the different aspects of this poetic genre in the outstanding works of these two great poets.

Edris Bedlisi was a prose writer contemporary with Sultan Agh ghoyonlu and then Shah Abbas Safavi in Iran.  His most important work regarding the Osmani history and his most well-known work among all his works is Hasht Behesht.  Both this work and its title are in Farsi.  The prose of Hasht behesht is technical following the style of Jahan Goshai Jovaini and Tarikh Vassaf written by Vassaf al- Hazreh.  It must be mentioned that the manuscript copy of Hasht Behesht neither in Iran nor in Turkey has not yet been corrected.  The content of this work includes the biography of eight Sultans from Osmanis’ Sultans beginning with Osman Beygh Ghazi and ending with Sultan Bayazid the second and coming to the throne of Yavouz Sultan Salim.In this article attempt is made based on a number of sources and some manuscript copies of this book to briefly introduce the book, its author, his style, and the prose in the writer’s era.

Herman Hesse is a writer who is regarded a symbol for young generation and certainly other generations of the twenties in Germany.  Some important themes in his works are the criticism of the bourgeois world and attempt to reveal the different aspect of man’s character, the study of the structure of dream and the individual’s transformation in the heart of the modern world with the help of fictional narrative.  One can add to this list, his admiration for the Goethe’s style, also the Romanticism of the 19th century and his passion for social sciences under the influence of the famous analyst of myths and legends Carl Gustave Jung.In this article, the role of woman and Hesse’s view towards woman which is one of his central themes is analyzed.  His approach with regard to the outstanding psychology of the characters he has portrayed necessitates drawing upon introversion and confrontation with feelings and emotions.  What is of prime importance in this novel, is the second by second experiences of “self” in the path of self-realization.

Vahid Ghazvini belongs to a family who has earned his life as a civil servant and like many civil servants in the Safavid era he was a poet and incidently a prolific one.  Vahid’s poetry is concerned with various subjects such as epic themes to lyrical and moral themes and Shahr Ashoub.  His main poetic style is Isfahani or Indian style which is the style of the poets in Safavid era.In this article, the features of his style in composing odes, his language (diction and syntax), and rhetorics (rhetorical devices) have been analyzed and examples were given for each case.

Sufis’s view with regard to Eblis is one of most controversial and at the same time the most engaging  subjects that is reflected in their most important texts.  On one hand, one is faced with radical beliefs speaking of rejection of devil and his condemnation from the God’s providence and on the other hand some of the key figures in the sufi world with their various interpretations in defence of Eblis or at least regarding his refusal to obey Adam, made their best to regard him as manifestation of love and bravery.This article is concerned with the study of the views of the great sufi figures regarding Eblis with emphasis on the ideological foundations of such renowned characters as Hallaj, Ahmad Ghazali, Ayn al-Qudat Hamedani, Attar Neishabouri, and Moulana Jalal al-Din Mohammad Balkhi.

Frequency in linguistics like in other scientific fields has numerous applications and on this basis variety of definitions have been put forward. In this article what is meant by frequency is the number of times that a linguistic element appears in a text hence it involves statistical works.  The purpose of this article is to study the Zyf’s law which is concerned with the relationship between the frequency and the length of the word and to apply this law to Farsi texts.  For this purpose two texts, modern and old consisting of 1500 words have been selected and the impact of frequency on the length of dictionary and naghshi words have been analyzed. The outcome of this analysis supports the Zyf’l aw in the Persian language.

Paradox is a European term which has entered the Persian literary discussions in the contemporary period and it has been defined as paradoxicality and in two poetic and conceptual contexts can be studied.  Mostly what is today comes under paradoxicality in Persian literature and poetry is the poetic context referred to as figures of thought and is considered as a literary device. However our concern in this article is not of this genre and it should be called merely paradox. We have criticized and assessed the paradoxes, conflicts of ideas, beliefs, and claims of poets in this article. Therefore discussions in this article are regarded within the domain of literary criticism, an area which is rarely appreciated in our literary research whereas more attention should be devoted to analysis, interpretation and evaluation of works of literature.

Daghoghi’s story in Masnavi Manavi is one of the stories which bewildered the readers but the bewilderment that the poet has times and times refers to is a mystical bewilderment.The poet’s experience and the theme of the story do not look familiar to the reader and it has hidden secrets whose understanding is not possible with our ordinary senses and it is beyond our everyday life experiences.  The internal ambiguity of most events requires commentaries and interpretations in such a way that in order to unveil its mysteries one cannot rely on logic and intellect. This story is an eternal experience which is transmitted through the unconscious and the key to the discovery of the unconscious is the study of its symbols.  In this article attempt is made to give a brief outline of the story and to solve some of its mysteries and complexities.

Although the term postmodernism is repeatedly used by the writers and even critics in Iran however due to the unfamiliarity as to its true origins, principles and features of this literary genre, believing in such a movement in fiction in this country is always discernible.  As to descry certain features as a basis according to which one can determine whether a work is postmodern or not and whether those features were adopted merely as a universal model together with the question whether these texts to the same measure that they are deconstructive, do they remain fiddle to the endemic possibilities of Farsi language and its past, are among the main questions this research and analysis is aimed at answering.The following works of Hooshang Golshiri short stories such as ”the night of doubt’, “A man with a red tie”, “A picture for my empty frame”, “The first innocent”, and “the garden’s prisoners” and long stories and novels like “Prince Ehtejab”,“Christian and Kayd”, and “ the mirrors with doors” were selected for this purpose.

Kalim Kashani is a creative, balanced, and prolific poet who has tried his hand in all types of poetry but his main reputation is for his lyricism.  Kalim’s Ghazaliat apart from having common features of Indian style, due to its poetic force of creativity, richness of diction and semantics, and lyrical inclinations, it has linguistic, literary features.The art of Kalim lies in his creation of imagery, content and he uses all the rhetoric possibilities of language in such a simple clear manner that makes his dense imagery far from complexity and ambiguity.  Similies in Ghazaliat Kalim is divided into three parts:  wide, farfetched, and favourite.In his Ghazaliat, Kalim uses mostly perceptual metaphors and sometimes he creates novel imagery out of non poetic subjects.  Although parallelism is the main feature of Saeb’s poetry, but Kalim is known to be the pioneer of this style and it is the characteristic of his poetry.Kalim’s Ghazaliat in terms of mental and spiritual states is expressive of his philosophical and lyrical thoughts.  The frequency of words, and his particular motifs in many cases is representative of his speculative and skeptical philosophical ideas. The main feature of his Ghazaliat is the application of such motifs which is the core of imagination and it reveals his perspective of life.  In this research, the analysis of his Ghazaliat with reference to previous studies has been made and examples were given.

Bahar is the first person who wrote stylistics in a methodological and scientific manner regarding the prose and defined it scientifically.  Although he didn’t live long to continue his research and do the same for the verse but he had scattered notes which later were collected.  In his book of stylistics, Bahar was more concerned with the linguistic aspect rather than other subjects.  The most prominent feature of Bahar’s odes is following the language of the past in all aspects especially in social and political issues the content was totally consistent with the details of the society of the day.  The movement of return to the ways of the ancients manifests itself mostly through their language particularly in their poetry.  In this article Bahar’s odes have been studied in terms of 1) phonology 2) morphology 3) syntax The phonology section is concerned with the characteristics of words such as tashdid, contraction, maximization, minimization, mutation in words and music produced by the proximity of words.  Morphology section deals with the employment of old words with fresh meanings and finally syntax is concerned with the structure of the languages in the past and their application in Bahar’s poetry focusing on supplements and variety of “ra”.

Since antiquity people were attracted to tales and stories. From the simplest form to the most complicated novels of today, people were fascinated by the characters, and heroes, to witness life and come into contact with different modes of life and learn lessons from them.  In fact stories as much as history played a significant role in peoples’ upbringing and education.  In some instances even more than history since the worlds depicted in stories and the knowledge gained in pursuing the fate of its heroes could not be contained in history. People are mostly fascinated by the actions of the characters since they could easily identify themselves with them. The more real the characters, the more they appealed to the reader.  Irrespective of the fact whether the characters were active or passive, and what the angle of vision was in the story because it was related to peoples’ lives and experiences they were attractive. Therefore the most attractive stories among people were those that had the best character and theme and the best characters where those who took form from the society and its events.Looking at Golestan from this angle, that is the manner in which Saadi uses techniques of characterization to create characters consistent in their behavior, motivated in their action and are plausible or lifelike leads us to another characteristic of this masterpiece which renders it forever eternal and delightful.

Virtuous woman is the title of the first story from the first article taken from the first Attar’s Masnavi, Elahi Nameh.  It is a story with 309 couplets and is considered the third longest after the story of “Sheikh Sanaan”, and “Rabee” in Attar’s Masnavis.The criticism and investigation of this story could penetrate into obscure corners of Attar’s art of storytelling.  The purpose of this article is to analyze the different elements of the story of the virtuous woman and investigate the technique of defamiliarization in order to throw some light on the structure of storytelling used by Attar.The most significant analytical points, expressing the genealogy of the story, studying  different elements of the story such as, point of view, character and characterization, plot, language, tone, and theme made possible the outcome of this research.

The Sociological approach to literature is one of the newest fields in sociology. In this field, the religious, moral, social, economical, political and ideological ambience of society in connection with literature is investigated.Within this framework the poetry of Ashraf al-Din Gilani, a popular poet of the constitutional period is analyzed.  New concepts such as home, government, nation, freedom, law are abundant in this period.  Although some of these words were seen in poetry in the past, yet we are confronted with a modern application of them which arose from the new ideas of constitutionalism and dominance of people.  Nasim Shomal’s poetry has been chosen because it is thought that due to low level of literacy of most Iranians in that period people could better memorize the poems since they were rhythmic and had a conversational style and people were better influenced by their contents.  Gilani came from the North, lived among and with people and was well aware of the peoples’ lives and their preoccupations hence he could very well relate with them.In this article, first we have divided the events in the constitution period into three parts in terms of social, political and economical aspects, and then we have classified the themes of the poems of his Divan accordingly.  The concordance of the themes with the historical events reveals that the poet was conscious of his time and he has very well reflected inconveniences, hopes, class differences, poverty, family problems, and etc in his poetry.

Literary works imperceptibly and indirectly reflect ideals, thoughts, life styles of every nation throughout history and it presents artistic portrays of social realities. The sociological approach to literature can reveal the social, political, and cultural milieu of every period to a certain extent.One of the most important features of literature and poetry of constitutionalism is the influence of the social and political movements. Under the influence of conditions dominating the society, poetry has entered the life of people and it depicts the nation’s way of life. Iran’s society is underway of change and revolution and the intellectuals attempt to replace the old traditions with the new ones. To realize that, the literature of protest and criticism whose important characteristic is socialism and realism is formed.Upon investigating the poetry of this period, one can easily reconstruct social conditions of that time and express and interpret the mental horizons of poets and their attitudes towards social and cultural issues.

Pun means bringing words which are identical in sound but differ in meaning. Homonymic pun points at the same time to both speech and writing.  In other words pun is a figure of speech which is both a musical device and a graffiti one. Based on the principle “Birds of a feather flock together” words also unconsciously seek their like and sit together.  This pun is the sweetest of the puns. If two words which are different in meaning share six characteristics such as (type of letters, number of letters, points, their form and  movement, orthography, and the sequence of letters) pun is called ploce, and if they differ only in one of those aspects the pun is called paronomasia.  If the difference lies in more than one aspect, pun is absolute.  The most beautiful of puns is the semi polyptoton.

Since antiquity the curious mind of man was in search of stars to know his fate and destiny. The inhabitants of the Earth looked also at the stones and metals.  Beads, precious and semi precious stones with their special colours and magical effects like happiness, unhappiness, charm, keeping the evil forces ie the evil eye at bay and increasing fortune, have preoccupied the mind of man.  Hence the present article is an attempt to search in the old middle texts (Pahlavi and Soghdi) and Islamic texts in order to find a trace of beads in ancient Iran.  Texts in which the characteristic magical properties of beads and the connection of some of them with stars has been described in such a way that perhaps one could introduce the universe as to the source of these Earth beads.Next, the properties of beads and a sample of the wonders of hexagonal beads with colours green, red, blue, yellow, black and violet based on Islamic sources of mineralogy are given.  Finally by correlating the beads with Shahnameh, we have spoken about the strong belief in this ancient legacy in the popular culture of what is known as the symbolic imagery of natural phenomena translated into a palpable and visible language.