LITERARY CRITICISM
Year:2016 | Volume:9 | Issue:35 |Papers Count:7

This paper presents the morphological study of fairy tales in Kurdish language. The purpose of this study is to determine the structure of these tales and their scale of differences and similarities to Vladimir Propp‘s study. Our study sheds light on Iranian languages other than Persian. We have adapted a descriptive method in our analysis of the data and draw on Propp‘s morphology of fairy tales. Surveying the structure of 155 tales, we have identified thirty-one functions, seven domains of operations, nine types of prime situations, and eighteen types of movement combinations. The result shows that Propp‘s patterns are significantly similar to the patterns in Kurdish language fairy tales and that their final structures are restricted to the same thirty-one functions offered by Propp. What differentiates fairy tales in Kurdish language from similar samples studied by Propp is the different methods of forming some of the functions. It is noteworthy, however, that these differences do not generate new and different structures.

This study investigates verisimilitude techniques in early Persian novels. To do this, various techniques of verisimilitude deployed in novels written from 1300 to 1320 (1920-1940) are extracted and categorized. Next, I analyze the rationale behind their usage and their relation to the conventions and presuppositions of the novel on the one hand, and the social context of that period on the other hand. The authors of that period vouched for the reality of the events of the stories using narrative strategies to authenticate the factuality of their stories and, at times, quite directly, asserting that the events of the story are based on objective realities. I have argued that the insistence on rendering the events of the novel as reality has its roots in the embryonic nature of this medium, belief in pedagogical function ofthe novel, prejudice against this new medium, and the intellectuals‘ belligerent stance against fiction.

Rasa’el is a collection of six prose pieces by Sa‘di that are usually included in his oeuvre. Since the early attempts at publishing a scholarly edition of his oeuvre, the question of Rasa’el’s authorship has been a central problem for the scholars. Several scholars have studied these six treatises and given us different answers to this problem. In the following study, I have quantitatively analyzed the Rasa’el using stylometry and authorship attribution techniques and compare it with Golestan —a well-known work by Sa‘di. I have used two different techniques to do my analysis. The first technique is ―characteristic curves‖proposed by Mendenhall (1841-1924). The second is a quantitative model to explain the repetition and distribution of vocabulary in each piece of writing. Ultimately, my answers correspond with Foroughi‘s conjecture about these writings. Three of these writings, namely, Nasihat ul-Muluk, Aql o Eshq, and Ankiyano, are surely written by Sa‘di. Taqrirat-e Salase and Dar Taqrir-e Dibache are not penned by Sa‘di. The author of Majales-e Panjgane also is not Sa‘di, but it is possible that its content draws on Sa‘di‘s speeches for the people.

Developing and using bibliographies in the field of literary studies is a widespread practice. These bibliographies are normally categorized as either concise or descriptive. The former is limited to bibliographic information and the latter includes brief summary of the works. In the last decade, especially with the publication of Farhang-e Sa’adi Pajouhi, 1 a new genre of literary bibliography has emerged in Iran. In addition to the book summary, this new type includes annotations. This type of bibliography, however, can be criticized because of (1) its value-judgment about books and articles and (2) for ignoring the underlying reasons for emergence of these books and articles. Also, this type of bibliographies ignores the historical context in which a literary work emerges and is read or ignored. In this paper, after discussing briefly the history of bibliographies, we will show how we can use ―aesthetics of reception‖theory to develop a new form of literary bibliography.

This research deals with five stories written by Simin Daneshvar, and investigates various types of hypertexutality in these works. This is an attempt to study how texts influence each other. To this aim, I have used Genette‘s theory of hypertexuality. I have identified five forms of hypertextuality in these books: imitation, adaptation, parody, paraphrase, and recreation. The least frequent form is parody and the most common one is paraphrasing. My study shows how Daneshvar, in the process of her writing, parodies and repeats her own books. This repetition reveals itself in the subject matter, the setting, and the characters. In particular, characters are the most repeated ones.

In some love stories and legends, the groom initially appears as a beast and after marriage is restored to a human form. The stories of beast-groom in the West are influenced by the story of ―Cupid and Psyche, ‖recorded by Apuleius, and in Iran by the story of Zahhak‘s marriage to Jamshid‘s sisters. Undergoing displacement, in the Islamic period, the beast-groom story was adapted to the Islamic thought and found a new place in the mystical anecdotes. An example of such stories is included in the book Hezar Hekayat-e Sufeyane.1 The central plot of this story is about the marriage of a werewolf to a human girl. In this paper, after studying the structure of this story and its mythological roots, I have compared it the story of Zahhak‘s marriage to Jamshid‘s sisters in Ferdowsi‘s Shahnameh and some other Iranian legends about beast-grooms. I have, furthermore, studied the symbolism of the wolf in Iranian mythology. Wolf is a manifestation of evil and, at the same time, a totemic ancestor of some neighbors and enemies of old Iran. According to the findings of this study, marriage of a human being to a werewolf in the mystical tales is linked to the exogamy tradition.

Postmodern literature especially postmodern fiction has become a central concern to many critics and literary theorists in the recent years. Too much focus on the literary techniques employed in this school of literature has hindered a proper recognition the subject. This paper studies Kazem Tina Tehrani‘s Gozargah-e Bi-payani as one of the first examples of postmodern fiction in Iran. My aim is to study not the postmodern techniques in this story, but its postmodern philosophical-anthropological basis. Instead of literary techniques, therefore, my study focuses on the formation of human subjectivity and the interplay of the self and the other in the process of subject-formation. Kazem Tina, I have concluded, has successfully combined the postmodern forms and a postmodernist anthropology—a success that was unprecedented in Iranian fiction at the time of the publication of his book.