TEXTUAL CRITICISM OF PERSIAN LITERATURE (RESEARCHES ON PERSIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE)
Year:2011 | Volume:3 | Issue:10|Papers Count:8

One of the useful tools for analyzing the mechanism of narratives, especially folk tales, is the method of Todorov. This method has been used for analyzing mythical narratives. Todorov considered different aspects of these stories and in doing so he divided their various speech parts into the categories of noun, adjective and verb. Thus by analyzing narratives we can gain formal units which resemble various parts of grammar.This paper studies speech parts in “Joneyd-nameh” and tries to understand reciprocal relations between “Joneyd-nameh” characters. To achieve this aim, first it explains Todorov’s theory of speech parts. Then speech parts like noun (character), verb (treatment) and adjective (property) are considered in “Joneyd-nameh” and, finally, the relation of each character of the story is analyzed with regard to these parts.The study of this property contributes to our understanding of the organization of narrative as well as the chain of relationships between characters on which the story is based.

Interpretation of colour in Haft Paykar is of fundamental importance. Colour is a major sign of narrative way of Nizami to express his attitude towards ontology. Thus, colour has a symbolic and interpretable field and understanding its symbolic meaning requires recognition of its interpretive background. Identification of such a background leads to understanding the symbolic link between colour and its origin, light. Relation between light and colour in Nizami’s narration has attracted other elements such as seven stars, seven domes, seven climates, seven ladies, seven metals, Bahram, time etc which have external and internal relations with colour. This relation in its symbolic interpretation has made the “Creator’ as light and “man” as colour; colour and light as unity and multiplicity.This paper explains Nizami’s viewpoint about symbolic interpretation of colour, external and internal relation between colour and form and the content of the story narrated in each coloured dome and their interpretive backgrounds.

Frankfurt School is one of the intellectual currents which considers the duty of thinking about present and understanding one’s time through thought as a factor for any intellectual practice. Frankfurt members analyze the society mostly on the basis of Karl Marx ideas but the main pivot of this school’s thought is found in critical theory which examines and analyzes those aspects of the social facts which have not been much important for Marx and his followers. This school includes criticism of the society and different aspects of social and intellectual life. The critical aesthetic theory arises from this school. This theory has been used in various realms and fields of the humanities and social sciences to analyze problems of contemporary societies. In this article, we have used the view point of this theory about art and literature. The scholars of the critical theory stated some features for art and literature in order to specify the boundary between genuine art and ignoble one based on their own critical insight. Here, we have first analyzed the main concepts in the critical aesthetics, i.e. criticism in art, ideological nature of art, revolutionary art and autonomy in art, and then by analyzing the most important political and social issues of Farrokhi Yazdi’s divan the originality of his art has been shown on the basis of this theory.

Rudaki’s famous ode (Buye Juye Mulian) caused lots of discussion among past and present biographers and historians because of the story that Nizami Aruzi has mentioned about the cause of its creation.Hirat and Marw have been mentioned as the place of composition of this ode by a number of investigators.Some of past researchers hesitated about validity and influence of this ode basically and even some of greatest contemporary investigators could not mention any specific place for creation of this ode and they have simply doubt past opinions, without mentioning a specific place.Among past researchers and authors Gardizi, Hamdulah Mostowfi, Hidayat and among contemporaries Saeed Nafisi, Abdul Ghani Mirzayev, Badiuzzaman Foruzanfar and Dr Moein are persons who have discussed about this ode.This article analyzes and criticizes ideas of past and contemporary researchers and also it has a specific view about the place of composition of this ode.

Despite his widespread fame and popularity little is known about the details of Hafez's life and the context of his poems. To overcome this problem, scholars either have accepted the cliches of the hagiographers and tried to interpret his poems in the light of those sayings, or they have read Hafez's lines as records of his life and times. If a scholar finds reference to a person or an event in one poem he usually tries to link it to many other poems, to make it a key for understanding Hafez's words and expressions throughout his work and to rewrite the details of his life accordingly. At the heart of this approach lies the belief that Hafez's couplets are autonomous. This notion of autonomy has caused many critics to disregard Hafez's holistic plans for his panegyric, rendaneh, mystical and amorous sonnets and to interpret Hafez's figurative and artistic meaning as factual and historical. Considering the unified and organic structure of Hafez's sonnets this paper intends to analyze the grounds and elements of the historical readings of Hafez's pure and ahistorical sonnets in order to prevent historical entanglement of his pure poems.

The study of different aspects of brevity and verbosity in the literary texts has a long history. But in the present paper these concepts are studied from a new point of view focusing on the relation of speech length with time and speed. For handling the complicated concepts of time and speed, first we have tried to limit our subject to studying the representation of speed and the practical control of time by brevity and verbosity in fictional texts. Then, by numerous examples the problems such as the poets’ understanding of time and speed and its consequences for their literary works are analyzed. The results of this study show that for having a deeper understanding of the brevity and verbosity it is indispensable to consider the concepts of time and speed in Persian literature.

Recreating stories, myths, events and, in general, all the ancient prose and verse works is of great value and importance. Recreating helps the artist to create a brand new work using his power of imagination while he gets the inspiration from the ancient work. And on the basis of his interests, attitudes and purposes he changes the genre of any topic. However, these recreations are not always apparent.Resorting to a comparative study of two totally different literary works, the present article seeks to answer the question whether Nima Youshij’s poem under the title of “Mahtab” is the recreation of the allegoric anecdote from Kelile va Demne, namely “Shabtab”. Undoubtedly, one of Nima’s thought sources was his attention to ancient Persian literature. He has mostly taken the essence of his contents from the ancient Persian literary works. But those ancient thoughts and ideas have been dressed newly and have changed their inner and outer figure after being processed in the creative mind of a thoughtful creator like Nima. Due to a large number of similarities between these two literary works, including their characters, dialogues, manners, events, time, space and other features, one can come to such a conclusion that Nima’s “Mahtab” has doubtlessly been influenced by “Shabtab” in Kelile va Demne, i.e. Nima’s “Mahtab” is the recreation of “Shabtab”.

Nezami Ganjavi is one of the great Persian poets that expanded storytelling, poetic language, and imagery in Persian language and poetry. The attention of literary scholars has been paid to his mastership of storytelling, spheres of his thoughts and his poetic images but less focus has been on his poetic language, especially his derivational compounds or compounding. In this essay, this aspect of his poetic language is studied on the basis of Russian formalism attitudes which hold that the specific characteristic of poetic discourse is linguistic defamiliarization. Also it is discussed that one poet may not coin or create a “simple word”, but the art of a great poet like Nezami is creating new compounds and derivational compounds. In Nezami’s works these compounds were created for foregrounding the poetic language and expressing new and different conditions and situations in the story world. In this essay the different compounds in Nezami’s works are classified and analyzed. The conclusion of this essay is that the new compounds and derivational compounds in Nezami’s works are so vast and so interesting that we can say this is his dominant poetic language and his narrative rhetoric.