TEXTUAL CRITICISM OF PERSIAN LITERATURE (RESEARCHES ON PERSIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE)
Year:2013 | Volume:49 | Issue:1 (17)|Papers Count:7

The preface of Shahnameh is a clear document about ideas, beliefs, aims, motivations and sources of Ferdowsi for composing Shahnameh.The aim of this article is to show by documents that the book ofal-Kafi by Koleini is among the main sources of Ferdowsi for writing such preface.The similarities and homologies between the themes of the two books are so many that refute any hypothesis but a conscious and intentional influence which shows that, as a Shiite theologian, Ferdowsi has used the first and most important collection of Shiite hadiths so deeply and artistically and also has determined the cultural identity of himself as well as his book. Of course, as is shown, such influence is not accidental but intentional and conscious, and conveys this message to the readers that the intention behind the composition of this work is not to revive ancient stories and culture but inserting the pure Islamic culture into these narratives and transferring such original culture to the people to whom there was not the possibility of direct talking due to the vileness of that epoch.And it seems that such style was used by other writers and poets to put the real meaning and truth in the container of stories and tales while warning the readers to pay attention to the contained, not the container.

Proposing a number of concepts such as system, code, communicative and distinctive nature of signs etc, semiotics has established a different method for reading the texts. Focusing on internal elements of system, this science illustrates the mechanism of meaning formation through signifying process of signs, and classifies and organizes them in the superficially confusing and unorganized stream of the text. Attra’s Elahi Nameh is one of the texts which has a remarkable role in the formation and development of short and long narratives in mystical works. Semiotic analysis of tales in this text can pave the way for demonstrating how narrative elements are organized in mystical texts.Using the descriptive-analytical method, this article aims to analyze semiotically the tale of “Ka’b daughter and her love and poem”. This tale, which has a direct relationship with the general narrative structure of Elahi Nameh regarding structure and meaning, shows that plot progression in this tale is done via opposition and tension in the elements of two codes of power and love; that is, being within the two codes, each element accepts narratively and linguistically a form and meaning which is proportionate to that code and the processing of tale’s narrative elements takes place via such oppositions. Regarding this matter and the point that such tale has been stated within the overall mystical narrative of Elahi Nameh, it can be said that all signs in this tale become meaningful structurally in a process of substitution within a wider system named mysticism. These are the rules and conventions of mysticism which affect the formation of narrative.

This research is a content analysis study which investigates the view of Nezami about individual, social and ideal identity in Panj Ganj. Nezami is an idealist thinker who uses poetry for releasing mankind from dystopia and reaching utopia. As a mirror reflecting his character, Nezami in Panj Ganj pays attention to different aspects of human essence beside the rapture of love and abnegation. In the image of his tales’ protagonists, he creates the identity of an ideal Man and refuses to represent realistically the identity characteristics of his protagonists and, instead, creates a number of typical characters whose process of reaching Perfection is completed at each moment through ideal foregrounding. Indeed, each of his protagonists offers a new model for human beings in order that they learn a lesson and reach Perfection via the process of self-promotion. Besides representing the individual identity of human being, he also represents his social and ideal (divine) identity. In Panj Ganj, the Perfect Man has sometimes religious identity, is a sage in some tales and in other cases he is a lover whose earthly love becomes more transcendental so that bestows him the mystical identity.

Nowadays, there is no doubt that any exploration into old Persian poetry will be incomplete without recourse to anthologies and collections of poem. Anthologies are of importance because they keep intact the name and traces of unknown poets and their poems. Among anthologies of Persian poetry, the No.900 anthology of parliament which is also known as the anthology and Tazkareh of poets and has been written down by an unknown scribe is of high value and significance regarding its content which includes newly-found and unprecedented poems.In this essay, while providing a summary of characteristics of this valuable anthology written in eighth century (A.H) as well as a short commentary of literature review about it, the newly found poems of well-known poets of sixth and seventh centuries such as Mo’ezi, Anvari, Mojir al-Din Beilaghani and Sa’di are provided. Indeed, in this article, two sonnets, one fragment and one quatrain by Anvari, one sonnet by Mo’ezi, three sonnets, one fragment and two quatrains by Mojir al-Din Beilaghani and two fragments by Sa’di are presented as poems which do not exist in their Divans.

Nameyeh Bastanis the most comprehensive commentary of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh in which Mir Jalaledin Kazazi has tried to disambiguate the meaning of ambiguous verses besides morphological, etymological, mythological, stylistic and aesthetic issues. On the other hand, this work is an edited text; that is, the author has tried to provide a comparative commentary on the basis of commentaries by other writers such as Khaleghi Motlagh, Moscow, Jul Mol, Kolaleyeh Khavar, Dabir Siaghi and Joveini, and select the verses in a more Ferdowsian manner. Of course, in a number of cases, the author has rejected the mentioned commentaries and he himself added a word to the text on the basis of some justifications. Since this work is taught in MA and even PhD courses of some universities or is used as an auxiliary source by post graduate students, the authors of this article aim to represent some shortcomings of such a great work and disambiguate some confusing verses in order that they are more usable for researchers of Shahnameh.

There are a number of elements such as sorcery, magic and talisman in tales which may be considered nowadays as superstitions and primitive beliefs of ancient man. To explain different aspects of talismans and how they are opened, three famous works out of masterpieces of written tales have been selected in this study in order to find out the relation between such elements. The aim of this article is to explore the manifestation of talisman among Iranians and the famous Persian folk tales. The results of this research show the closeness of some talismans to the extent that in several stories like Husein Kurd and Amir Arsalan, the breaking of talisman is represented in the same way which shows the temporal approximation of the two stories. Fire is the main axis of talismans and this shows clearly the influence of Islamic teachings about the role of fire in the creation of demons and jinns. Talisman and talisman-makers live in the countries other than Iran and such satanic actions are not seen in the divine land of Iran.

Although Khajuye Kermani’s Divan is important in many aspects, there is only one commentary of this Divan which consists of odes, sonnets, quatrains etc. This commentary which has been written by Ahmad Soheili Khansari in 1336 has many problems. One of the problems of this commentary is that it did not use all the available versions of the Divan. Also, the version used in this commentary has been ignored many times without any textual-critical reason. In this article, various aspects of this commentary are evaluated and, through this, it is shown that the available commentary of Khajuye Kermani’s Divan is far from a critical commentary.