LITERARY CRITICISM
Year:2011 | Volume:4 | Issue:15|Papers Count:19

We know ten collections of poetry under the title of Karnameh in the history of Persian literature. Karnameh is a collection of verse in the form of heroic couplet in which the poet reproaches the court members by using parody. It is an independent literary genre used for less than two hundred and fifty years in Persian poetry. Some famous Persian poets have composed Karnameh. Because of its importance, mostly Sanaee's Karnameh has been the focus of attention in Persian studies and other Karnamehs have been considered as a part of Shahrashubsor an Ikhwani poem. There is no entry for Karnameh in dictionaries and encyclopedias. In this article, while introducing Karnameh in Persian, its form, theme, audience, structure, and intertextual relations are investigated and it is shown that Karnameh can be regarded as a specific literary genre.

There are some mystical works which are the written form of Sufis' teachings, lectures, and popular tales. In other words, these works are nothing but the transference of speech to the field of writing. Thus, some aspects of both forms, that is, speech and writing, can be found in them. Taxonomy of Sufis' texts according to their formative contexts (speech and writing) shapes a continuum between these two contexts. What we call goftarnevesht (written-speech) in this article, is a coinage for the synthesis of these two contexts which itself consists of subgenres such as amali, maqamat, majalis, maqalat and siyar. These subgenres are different from each other due to their location on the continuum. This article attempts to describe the differences between goftarneveshtand other written genres which are mostly represented in phonological, morphological, syntactic, and discursive features of the texts.

In most prose writings of Qajar era, there is a critical thinking which is the elan vital for the evolution of the prose genres. This critical thinking is global and we can recognize it in the first works in the beginning years of Qajar dynasty. After those years, this approach continued more forcefully until Constitutional Movement and then it faded gradually. Some of the prose genres and their transformations in this era have been already studied, and some are investigated in this essay. By and large, it can be claimed that critical approach is the main force behind the evolution of the prose genres. Some of these geners in light of this critical thinking changed significantly, while some other were totally abandoned. There are genres that were brought into being through critical thinking as independent ones and ever since have lived with few changes. This fact proves that critical approach is the major factor for the evolution of the prose genres during Qajar period.

This article studies the role of "Rhetorical Situation" in the formation of genres. Accordingly, the article discusses the concept of genre in rhetoric which includes a variety of fields ranging from the ancient oratory tothe communication studies in 20th century. Unlike literary approaches which define genre mostly on the basis of textual features (form and content), rhetorical approach defines genre according to the extra-textual features such as situation and audience. Before 20th century, the concept of "situation" was very much static and limited to some specific and clear-cut situations and the speaker and audience only had to passively respond to these situations. In 20th century, the theories of Bakhtin and Carolin Miller turned this concept into a dynamic one. According to these theorists, a genre comes to existence in a communicative process and with the participation of speaker and audience. This article first addresses the theories of genre in ancient rhetoric, and then goes on to show that the definition of genre as social action makes genre a tool for production and reproduction of social values and ideological assumptions in different cultures. Finally, the article mentions some of the consequences of rhetorical approach for literary studies.

"Bakhtin begins by noting that human activity is inextricably related to the use of language, thenature and forms of this use being just as diverse as are the areas of human activity. Bakhtin's point is that each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively stable utterance types, which he terms them speech genres. Bakhtin distinguishes between primary and secondary speech genres; the latter includes novels, poetry, drama, scientific treatises, etc. In the process of their formation, they absorb and digest various primary genres. According to Bakhtin it is impossible to speak or write outside of such genres. We acquire them in the process ofacquiring our native language, mastering them before we master the elements of grammar. The forms of language and the typical forms of utterances-speech genres-enter our experience and our consciousness together. The speaker's evaluative attitude towards his subject determines his lexical, grammatical, and compositional choices. This expressiveness is not a property of the linguistic units themselves but is imparted to them by the person using them through the use of a particular speech genre. Bakhtin stresses that one of the essential characteristics of the utterance is its addressivity, or its quality of being directed to someone."

This paper examines the tradition of writing adja'ibnameh as the fantastic writing. The question is how we can/not regard adja'ib (marvels) as fantastic. First, we refer to the literature of both adja'iband the fantastic. Then, the etymology as well as the religious and socio-historical origins of both words is examined. It is concluded that the fantastic has a root in fancy and mental hallucination while adja'ib has its roots in reality, originating from observer's exact observation. Then, Todorovian structural approach to adja'ib is counterbalanced, showing that some tales of Adja'ib-e hend conform with the five kinds of the marvelous fantastic in Todorov's diagram. In sum, it can be claimed that adja'ib conforms onlytocertain aspects of fantastic writing.

Parody is a literary sub-genre which mocks its main genre. Considering the value and significance of the main genre and also the structure and nature of parody, it can be considered as an independent genre. Since meaning in literature is one of the main elements and has a central role in both language and imagination, it is of considerable importance in literary works. Therefore, one of the most important kinds of parody which is called tazriq in Persian literature has been formed around the question of meaning. One of the goals of parody is to entertain the audience and make them laugh, and tazriq satisfies this goal very well. Though there are a few differences, this kind of parody can be found in Western literature where it is called nonsense verse. This article tries to compare the main aspects of these two kinds of parody.

Muhtasham-e Kashani (935-996/ 1528-1588) is called Khaqani-e sani because of his well-made and strong odes which resemble Anvari's and Khaqani's, and alsoHassan-e al-ajam because of his enthusiastic elegy on Imam Hussein. But the innovative dimension of his style, which is rarely recognized by the stylisticiansand literary historians, is mostly manifested in his rasayel (Jalalieh and Naql-eoshaq) not in his sonnets and odes. These two essays or rasayel, which are unique because of their lyrical-narrative structure and their explanation of realistic and vasookhti experiments, are not even referred to in the studies of Voqu' and Vasookht schools. Muhtasham has combined a prose narration of realistic love with extemporaneous sonnets (and sometimes with other poetic forms) and has created a different literary genre. The present article tries to introduce this unknown genre and to explain the structural and stylistic features of this kind of lyrical narration in Muhtasham'srasayel.

This article studies the structure of the spiritual travelogues and classifies them as a particular genre. The similarities, differences, and specific elements in twenty different examples of such stories have been reviewed in order to place them in their right categories. It can be claimed that these stories follow almost a similar structure in their narration and accordingly can be classified as a particular genre under the allegory of dream.