TEXTUAL CRITICISM OF PERSIAN LITERATURE (RESEARCHES ON PERSIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE)
Year:2011 | Volume:3 | Issue:3 (11)|Papers Count:8

Religious thinkers and scholars, based on their peculiar dispositions, have considered the wise, strong, weak, insightful etc person as the model of Perfect Man. In the twentieth century, Behaviorism, Psychoanalysis and Humanism have made it possible to pay more objective attention to human character. Psychoanalysis sees man as a product of his instinct, and Behaviorism of his environment.While disapproving the two theories, Maslow (1908-1970) considers man to be essentially good and in constant search of Self-actualization. He sees behavior as arising from needs which he classifies into five categories: 1) physiological needs 2) safety and security 3) love and belonging 4) self-esteem 5) Self-actualization. Maslow cites several attributes of Self-actualized people and the present paper addresses two of them in Ghazaliat Hafez: 1) better perception of reality 2) acceptance of Self, others and nature. From Hafez’s viewpoint, the world is the most enigmatic phenomenon to be understood.Despite being aware of the world instability, he never reads it as he desires but interprets it differently. His Self acceptance includes: 1) poetic skill 2) taking responsibility of one’s actions 3) hopefulness. His knowledge that frailties can be compensated is the core of his acceptance of Self, others and nature.

Light is one of the most important topics in Islamic mysticism and it is also one of the most popular theoretical-theological issues among theologians and philosophers.Among Muslim mystics, Jalal-o-Din Mohammd Molavi has paid attention to this issue a lot and used it for expressing various epistemological and monotheist goals. Under the influence of Islamic culture and its main sources (the Quran and hadith), he investigated types and levels of light (permanent vs. transient light).While explaining these issues, the authors of this article study the secular and eschatological functions and uses of light in Mathnavi and try to compare the optical thought of Molavi with other mystics, and explain some of their similarities and differences. Authors show that, by using this central mystical element and through personal experiences, Molana describes and explains elusive and difficult epistemological problems to his addressees in a simple and intelligible manner and persuades them to acquire light and knowledge of the Self for passing the difficult course of the Path.

In narratology, characters are considered as part of overall structure of text and are subject to predetermined actions.Thus, for analyzing characters, first of all, a pattern of their action area should be gained. Algirdas Julien Greimas is among those narratologists who gained such a pattern.Greimas believes his actant pattern is universal and compatible with any kind of narrative. On the other hand, the theme of narrative can somehow affect its structure. In this article, with respect to universality of Greimas’ pattern and its compatibility with any kind of narrative, some narratives of first and second book of Masnavi which have theological theme were selected to show what would happen during the confrontation of theological narratives and actant pattern as a part of structure, and through this confrontation a new window will be opened so that we can gain a novel and different view about some of theological narratives of Masnavi.What is emphasized as the result of this research are changes which take place due to the theological theme of narratives, especially in the action area of halter and helper. Proportional to their theological ideas, actants are sometimes aware of these changes and sometimes act unconsciously. Also, on the basis of Greimas’ theory and Actions Monotheism idea, the fundamental binary opposition in selected narratives of Man and God is considered as the real and unreal subjects whose objects can be in the same or opposite direction.

Romanticism is one of those schools which emerged in the 18th century with the slogan of free expression of individual sentiments, naturalism, primitivism, imaginary view and … versus the rationalistic thought of classicism. Nafthat-al-Masdoor, as a historical and literary text, has certain similarities to romantic principles and basics and this provides the base for critical view of Romanticism in this work according to its stylistic features. According to semantic point of view, factors like paying attention to personal emotions and free expression of them, interpretive view to the nature, relying on secondary imagination for describing objective matters, drawing utopia and also linguistic factors such as foregrounding literary aspect of the text by using literary techniques like simile, metaphor, allusion and …, long and repeated descriptions and symbolism are some factors which have given Nafthat-al-Masdoor a romantic style. This article does not want to inject certain thought by a positivist view, but it tries to establish a new view to a classic text by naming the common features of Nafthata-al-Masdoor and Romanticism and at the same time by emphasizing literary speech and historical context for surveying the ways of meaning formation.

In Mazda’s tradition, gods, angels guarding the heavens and earth and any good thing created by Mazda are all entitled Rad. In most of the Zoroastrian scriptures and Pahlavi texts, Rad is also used as synonymous with Zoroastrian religious headman or spiritual leader. Rad is a frequently used term in Shahnameh to which the lexicographers have attributed various meanings, such as learned, wise, brave and champion.However, the important points overlooked by explicators are the relationship between Rad and Mubad (Zoroastrian priest) and the reason why these two words have co-occurred so frequently in Shahnameh, the most famous Persian national epic. It seems that Rad in Shahnameh, based on Avesta and Pahlavi texts, is often construed as Sadane or Dastoor that was a high position in ancient Iran’s religious hierarchy. Thus, Rads and Mubads were both considered members of religious communities. This study tries to investigate the role and position of Rads and Mubads and their relationship with one another, based on Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, in three chapters: The etymology of Rad; Rad in Shahnameh; The relationship between Rads and Mubads.

By interpreting fictional elements like scenery, setting and the voice of characters in Bihaghi History and by using association of meanings on the vertical and horizontal axes of language, this article tries to prove the hypothesis that Abolfazl Bihaghi used such elements not only to embellish his language but also to criticize Masoud Ghaznavi government and describe the unreliable milieu of his court. Thus, it can be argued that Bihaghi’s language is not simply conservative but also criticizing. This criticism targets the corruptions which lead to unreliability in Masoud Ghaznavi’s court. Of course, this kind of criticism is a smart one which conserves the status of the king.

The life and story of prophets, as perfect human beings with divine personality and humane demeanor, have been reflected in most of Persian literary texts and used as one of the richest sources of formation of different literary and artistic works as well as provided the best themes and images for poets and authors in Persian literature.The present article tries to investigate and analyze prophets’ life stories in Khaghani’s poetry. He used the life story of seventeen prophets; among them the life story of holy prophet Mohammad (PBUH) had the highest number of usage (allusion).He, indeed, used just a brief account of the prophets’ life stories in poetic form. But, most of the time, he referred to them in order to put forward a problem or address an issue; among which "panegyric" is a good example. To do so, the poet of Shirvan made use of such figurative devices as simile and hyperbole (overstatement).

Keeping governmental secrets in official letters is one of the important issues of governments in all periods and its importance increases every day so that scientists try to find new methods for encoding and decoding of information. Nowadays, in mathematics and computer science a number of fields and trends have been created for encryption. On the basis of sources and documents, the history of this practice goes back to Greek civilization.Some groups of people like criminals, prisoners and professional beggars use coded languages which linguists call them Argo.There is almost no scientific research about history and types of puzzle language and script in Persian literature, and even there is no entry for this issue in Persian encyclopedias. The main reasons of this are that, on the one hand, there are not enough sources and references about this issue and, on the other, the rules of such knowledge were not taught to people in fear of revealing the secrets.This article introduces not only the methods of encryption in Islamic culture but also encoding fonts, inks for invisible writing and the terminology of this science whose secrets have been hidden.