LITERARY CRITICISM
Year:2010 | Volume:3 | Issue:10|Papers Count:8

In historical studies, period is a regulative concept. It helps historians of arts and sciences classify historical information. In most literary histories, periodization is the most essential basis of division. Periodization also was applied in literary studies like rhetorics. For example, Shawqi Zaif has divided the history of Islamic-Arabic rhetorics into periods. In this article, we are to propose a schema for periodization of history of Persian rhetorics. System of Persian rhetorics was originally derived from Arabic rhetorics but the quality and quantity of adaptation in different periods wasn’t the same. In some cases, Persian rhetoricians came up with important innovations in periodization and sometimes they made use of rhetorics of the other civilizations for instance Indian rhetorics in order to study aesthetical aspects of Persian literature. Base on the historical era they were living in and the similarities of their approaches, we can distinguish four different periods:1. Localization Period: This period, as the first period of Persian rhetorics, includes the most important books of Persian rhetorics:Tarjoman al-balaqa, Hadaeq al-sehr, and Al-mo’jam fi ma’air ash’ar al-ajam;2. Interpretation and Imitation Period: Most of rhetoric books in this period are interpretations of previous period;3. Pseudo- Indian Period: In this period, a few rhetoricians try to apply Indian rhetorics to Persian literature;4. Scholastic Period: The last period is a contemporary one and includes new rhetorical textbooks.

This article has categorized Sufi prose in two contrasting species: the first is constructed discourse (kalām-e motamakken) and second one is deconstructed discourse (kalām-e Maqlub). These two terms have been used by Sufis in their books. The distinguishing bases of these two discourses are the epistemic origin, source of knowledge, text content and the function of language in Sufi discourse. Constructed texts contain social concepts of Sufism and originate from a collective and ideological knowledge. Indeed they organize a group state and the language plays the role of a regulator in them. The deconstructed discourse is the second group of texts that have their roots in personal experiences and create a new imaginative and textual world. A deconstructed text, in terms of implications, is an open text that is flexible for interpretation and metaphorical pole of language dominates it, while constructed text hinders further interpretation. The article at the end shows the transformation process of Sufi prose from the constructed discourse word by word to the deconstructed discourse.

The history of the genre theory dates back to the genre classificatory system of Plato and Aristotle that classified literary works–epic, lyric, and dramatic genres–according to enunciative modes; i.e. according to the enunciative modes that is represented in author or speaker’s discourse. In modern genre theory, “mode” denotes the thematic aspects of literary genres. When we say that this novel is tragic, it means that its genre is novel its mode is tragic. The modal terms–such as tragic, epic, heroic, gothic, lyrical, comic–are not dependent to the structural and formal aspects of the literary genres. This study aims to find out how some literary genres such as tragedy, comedy, epic, and lyric become so wide spread that their thematic features in adjective form are used to modify and describe other genres, while some other literary genres such as novel and short story cannot create their modes. Even though genres may disappear after some time, but their modes may survive in the longer run. The modes derive their life from genres, and their existence depends on genres. It should be noted, however, that there are some modes in English and Persian literature such as satire that is not derived from genres or literary forms.

This paper explores the functions of light and the related visual clusters such as sun, candles, lights, and so forth in Molavi’s ghazals based on a cognitive theory of contemporary metaphor. “Light” in the Divan-e-Shams indicates that “recognition and knowledge” is a visual concept and it can be regarded as a primary metaphorical mapping in the deep-structure of this work. Drawing on the same concept and the secondary mapping, “divine world is light”, Molavi has accounted “light” as God, perfect man, place, food and wine, guidance and hope. Furthermore, he has explained the subject of “existence and nonexistence” through this mapping. This metaphorical mapping paves the way for the analysis of Molavi’s abstract subjects and reveals intratextual coherence of the ghazals.

Connecting the literary text world to reader’s world as well as reading all signifying aspect of a fiction’s world is not achievable by literary criticism. As a result, it seems that there is a necessity for a theory which can study the text world scientifically and in terms of literary creativity. In other words, there is the need for a theory that can pave the way for a scientific survey of literature. In order to evaluate the text world theory, in this article, it has been tried to analyze all the fictions in the collection The Panthers Who have Run with Me by Bijan Najdi, an Iranian writer. The question raised in this paper is, accordingly, whether text world theory can identify the elements which structure Najdi’s fiction narration. Then how is Nadji distinguished from other authors with respect to the production and reception of his text world? The hypothesis of this paper is that the three layers “discourse world”, “text world”, “text sub-world” each constitutes a part of the narration. With reference to the second question, it can be claimed that Najdi produces a cohesive discourse world in his book by creating and drawing on some common elements in all his fictions. In this way, in fact, he connects the seemingly separate fictions. It should be noted that according to Najdi’s text world’s reading, every world can embed another world inside and create an underlying fiction by different narrative techniques. Finally, a remarkable feature of Najdi’s works is the production of sub-stories by underlying or sub-text worlds, which activate underlying stories.

One philosophical theme often attributed to Khayyámic rubáis is nihilism, which unfortunately has not been examined in detail and according to a firm theoretical basis. This paper probes into the theme in two famous Persian collections of such rubáis: Sadeq Hedayat’s edition of Taraneh-haye Khayyám as well as Forughi and Ghani’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. For this purpose, the paper consists of an introduction as well as two main parts and a conclusion. In the introduction, the necessity of holding the theory of Khayyámic rubáis–that is, a school of rubái-composing after Omar Khayyam and not the Rubáiyát of Khayyam–is explained. In the first part of the paper, which is entirely theoretical, based on Donald Crosby’s classification of nihilisms in his book, The Specter of the Absurd, two relating types of nihilism along with some common arguments for nihilism are explicated. In the second practical part, the aforementioned definitions and assumptions are applied to the rubáis under discussion.

Vujuh (literary means “aspects”) is a branch of Qur’anic sciences that has been resorted to a lot by Qur’an researchers in the course of the history of Qur’an interpretation (Tafsir). Vujuh refers to the polysemous words in Qur’an. Some Qur’anic words have even more than twenty meanings. Considering the abundance of polysemous words in the Holy Qur’an, it is indeed a very hard task to identify the exact signified for every signifier in it. This paper studies the aspects for the meanings of the word “Aayah” (verse) from a semiotic approach. The word “Aayah” has two textual (the verses of the Qur’an) and contextual (the natural world, soul of man, and the lives of the predecessors) senses in Qur’an. The results of the study indicate that it is necessary to carefully consider both the immediate and distant cotexts. In other words, the paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of a text are not limited to the immediate cotexts. In the Holy Qur’an a verse in one part can be related paradigmatically and syntagmatically to another verse in a different part.