Journal of Comparative Literature
Year:2018 | Volume:9 | Issue:17 |Papers Count:14

Undoubtedly, epics reflect the flow of events, elements, and natural and supernatural creatures in human’ s life. The interference and accompaniment of the live elements of nature alongside the epic tools have reflected very beautiful images of the greatness of epics. An example of these elements is the significant presence of "horse" and its descriptions and images in epic-war battle scenes. The epic of Shahnameh has created beautiful images of this creature based on the principle of the heroic families’ presence and the great value of horse beside other war elements. Also, this element with its partial use is one of the frequent symbols of animal symbolism and marital value in the Arabic epic literature of the Age of Ignorance, namely Antara’ s book of poetry. The present study investigates and compares the position of horse and its images in Antara Ibn Shaddad’ s book of poetry and Ferdowsi’ s Shahnameh. The findings show that the epic descriptions of horse and its field characterizations in the company of hero, in making balance of power, was one of the main common themes of the two works. But Antara’ s perspective on horse descriptions and similes was limited in comparison with Ferdowsi, and his references to racial authenticity in these kinds of descriptions were few.

The mysticism of Khorasan from the third century AH to the sixth century AH has had the widest extent in the Persian culture and literature. From the sixth century AH onwards, especially from the seventh century AH, theoretical mysticism has become more widespread with the introduction of Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi. What has lead to the creation of theoretical and practical mysticism is the mystics’ different views of the category of unity. Despite numerous researches on unity/ monotheism, no attention has been paid to the issue of creation beside truth and the difference of spiritual wayfaring in relation to the category of unity. With this in mind, poetical works of Attar Neyshabouri as the representative of the mysticism of Khorasan, and Ibn Arabi’ s thoughts in the The Bezels of Wisdom and The Meccan Illuminations were examined closely, and the verses and the parts indicating unity or monotheism, look at creation, and levels of the world were extracted, and the necessary analyses were offered based on the explanations. It was concluded that in the mysticism of Khorasan, the look at the creator and mere attention to him is at the beginning of the movement of the spiritual wayfarer, and that in the mysticism of Iraq, attention is drawn to both creation and truth. The mystics of Khorasan view creation as mirage and shadow, while creation is the truth itself in the mysticism of Ibn Arabi. On the other hand, the issue of achieving the highest level of unity in the mysticism of Khorasan is in the position of the manifestation of phoenix (the level of unicity in comparison with theoretical mysticism) and in the existential mysticism of Ibn Arabi is in the determination of the oneness of God. The basis of spiritual wayfaring in the mysticism of Khorasan is the mere attention to the truth and the rejection of existence, while the basis of mysticism of Iraq is self-awareness and the acceptance of existence authenticity.

Yunus Emre (720-638 AH), the Turkish poet whose years of youth coincided with Maulana’ s years of aging, was a poet and a Sufi mystic, strongly influenced by Maulana’ s beliefs, thoughts, and poems. He created some works on mysticism and Sufism in Turkish, which have opened a new chapter in Turkish mysticism and Sufism, while repeating his thoughts. Like Maulana, he could open a new chapter in the Turkish mystical literature by taking advantage of the rich culture of his country and its combination with the deep Islamic-mystical concepts. The influence of Maulana’ s thought, known as pantheism, is clearly visible on Yunus Emre’ s thought and works. Pantheism as one of the main topics of Islamic mysticism, which traversed the Islamic world from the west to the east, with all its variable forms (such as monotheism, manifestation, the eternality of God, and new creation) has played a main role in Maulana’ s works, specially in the Mathnawi, and similarly in Yunus Emre’ s works, like Risalat al-Nasiyeh and his book of poetry. After the translation of Yunus Emre’ s poems containing pantheistic thought, from Istanbul Turkish and their comparison with Maulana’ s poems, it was concluded that Yunus Emre was, undoubtedly, directly influenced by Maulana in representing his thoughts.

The present study focuses on a better understanding of the feminine view and approach of Simin Daneshvar, the famous contemporary Iranian novelist, and ghada-al-Samman, the famous contemporary writer in the Arab world, whose writings were feminine. No doubt, Daneshvar had a notable contribution in the reinforcement and expansion of feminine literature in Iran by her pleasing and widely-read novel "Savushun". Also, al-Samman is the instinct of Arab woman that shouts from behind the thick and old walls of centuries, in her literary masterpieces. This study aims at finding the similarities in Daneshvar’ s and al-Samman’ s feminist views, based on a descriptive-analytical method. Here, Daneshvar’ s novel "Savushun" and al-Samman’ s poems have been investigated from this perspective. Meanwhile, the similarities of the feminine views of the two Iranian and Syrian literary women on issues like woman, war, love, etc., have been discussed by offering examples as evidence. It was revealed that how Daneshvar and al-Samman had similar views of the mentioned issues, despite their differences in ideology and geography.

Spiritual intelligence constitutes the basis of an individual’ s beliefs and ensures the highest-level bases of cognitive development, which appear in the form of personality and emotional development. The discovery of spiritual intelligence components in children's literature will help the formation of children's self-concept identity and their religious beliefs. Also, trust in training and spiritual motivations will be a functional model for creating new works, provided that the potential power of language is considered in the expansion of intellectual, emotional and experiential boundaries and the child-appropriate verbal structure is created. In this study, the novels "Sakhtun" and "Hear My Cry" were compared with each other to investigate and extract the spiritual intelligence components. The frequency of these components in the two novels was studies using a method of content analysis and semantic comparison. The main research question is to see if it is possible to make a link between children’ s literature and spiritual intelligence components, and a connection between the simplicity of children’ s stories and the concept of intellectual intelligence. The results indicate that these writers from two different sides of the world have taken advantage of spiritual intelligence concepts in the content of their stories, and that they shared similar perspectives and thoughts.

This article aims at examining how the phenomenon of "war" is reflected as a social harm in the poetry of Bahar and Shawqi, two eminent contemporary Persian and Arab poets, in a descriptive-analytical study, relying on the American school of comparative literature. The theoretical framework includes the main questions, the identification of the significance of the subject, the review of literature, and a biography of the two mentioned poets. The purpose of this research is to reach a new understanding of political, social, and cultural similarities and differences between the two countries of Iran and Egypt in the times of the Iranian Constitutional revolution and the Arabic renaissance. Some of the findings were as follows: a) Advice on the avoidance of warmongering is observed in their poetry. b)The way the phenomenon of is reflected in their poetry is, to a large extent, under the influence of their environment, culture, race, and geography. c) The consequences of war are almost the same from both poets’ points of view.

Jabal Amel is a region in the Southern Lebanon, near the Mediterranean Sea, extending as far as Palestine. It includes the cities of Sour, Sidon, Bint Jbeil, Nabatieh. The inhabitants of Jabal Amel are Shiites and share many religious beliefs with Iranians. Therefore, there are many similarities in Ashoura poetry of Jabal Amel and Iran. In Iran, the fall of the monarchy and the victory of the Islamic republic opened a new chapter in contemporary Ashura poetry and created a new trend in the composing of religious, Ashoura poetry, the diversity and expansion of which was unprecedented. On the other hand, the presence of colonizers, the frequent invansions of the Zionist regime, and the resistence of Lebanese people against them in Jabal Amel have led poets to work on Ashura poetry more than before. This study tries to study and analyze the main common Ashura themes in contemporary poetry of the two regions.

According to Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychologist, the collective unconscious is a heritage left by early generations of human ancestors, which is present within the minds of every individual. In this collective unconscious, there are some eternal images and common universal concepts, called ''archetype'' by Jung. He considers the main archetypes as shadow, mask, anima, and animus, the most important of which is probably anima, referring to the feminine inner personality in the unconscious of a man. This archetype is observable in all literary works of the world, and it has been an inspiration for poets and writers to enrich their works. Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and Qeysar Aminpour are among those poets who have revealed their inner feelings being inspired by this archetype. This article aims at studying and comparing this archetype in their poetry using the comparative approach of the American school. The findings of this study reveal that the presence of anima is one of the most important emotional bases for the two poets, which has appeared in different forms based on the different cultural and geographical conditions they lived in.

The tradition of mourning for the dead is an ancient tradition. It is one of the long-lasting rituals, which was not forgotten or abolished, but increased in importance and prominence, as a result of altruism, men’ s gratitude and appreciation towards their relative and martyrs. Especially, the death of heroes, noblemen, and martyrs in the way of defending their homelands has never been erased from the minds of men. The Kurds and the Lurs, as two of the Iranian ethnic groups, have always well kept and preserved many ancient traditions over the course of history. For example, they perform mourning rituals for the noblemen and heroes as they were in ancient Iran and in Ferdowsi’ s Shahnameh. So that, the Lurish and Kurdish inhabited regions follow some similar mourning rituals in Shahnameh, such as the period of mourning, wearing black clothes, scratching the face, pulling on the hair, throwing dust over the head, mourning songs, etc. This study tries to compare Lurish and Kurdish mourning rituals with the mourning tradition in Shahnameh, using references and descriptive-analytical method.

The nature of ''Pari'' in Persian reference sources is vague and complicated. The Greeks, the ancient Iranians, and the post-Islam Iranians had their own special beliefs about Pari. The interference of these beliefs has led to the ambiguity of its nature and signified in the minds of many. This study aims at giving a clear image of the nature of Pari, helping a better and a more accurate understanding and comprehension of literary, religious, and historical texts. For this purpose, the signified of this word, from the oldest times to the present, has been studied in relevant sources; its referent and nature in ancient times; and its referent, nature, literal meaning, and figurative meaning in Persian literature has been represented. With this in mind, In ancient times, Pari was an evil, foul creature and an enemy of Roshanan (the stars) and Mazdisnan (Zoroastrians), which had many types. Reaching the Persian literature from the ancient and medieval times, Pari changed its nature from an evil, negative creature to a righteous, positive creature. In Persian literature, Pari is mostly referred to as ''the Muslim jinn'', a devout, righteous creature. It can be said that ''Pari'' is the only misfortunate word which has found luck, as it has reached light from darkness, beauty from ugliness, right-doing from wrong-doing, and obedience to God from helping the devil. The result is that Islamic teachings have been positivist, and the Persian language has had a proper capacity for the inclusion of new concepts and ideas in the form of its original words.

Ali Esfandiyari (Nima Youshij) and Ali Ahmad Saeed (Adonis) are among the eminent contemporary poets of Persian and Arabic literature, who had worked on mythology and symbolism. Phoenix, which is called "Qoqnus" in Persian and "Phiniq" in Semitic, is an example of common myths between Persian and Semitic mythology. Showing the transformation of the semantic functions of the mentioned myths during the course of time, while preserving the mystical structure, as well as the way these myths are used as one of the potential language capacities of Persian and Arabic poetry to express the political-social themes of the poet’ s time are some of the requirements for doing the present research. This study has employed a descriptive-analytical method with a comparative approach. The findings of this study indicate that Nima and Adonis, in their poems, have used the myths of ''Qoqnus'' and ''Phiniq'' in a symbolic way, with a new point of similarity, different from the predecessor’ s poetry, which are not only a symbol for the poets themselves, but also a way of expressing the political-social concepts they had in mind, in a way that both poets have used theses myths for a single theme and a similar mission.

In some cases, mystical poets have taken advantage of epic concepts, motifs, and sometimes symbols in order to express their inner states and revelations to their audiences. Sometimes, this barrowing is evident enough to make the audience believe that the poet had an epic text in mind, as in Mantegh-al-Tair, Attar had some works of epic literature, like Shahnameh, in mind. These similarities, on the one hand, and the recognition of a rather new subgenre of epic literature, i. e., mystical epic, on the other hand, as well as the theme of the hero’ s journeys and their almost similar stages motivated a comparative study of similarities, as in the narrative structure, and common motifs in Attar’ s Mantegh-al-Tair and Homer’ s Odyssey. Comparing the two works, the following results were given: a) There are considerable similarities in their narrative structures. b) They have numerous common motifs in them. c) The hero’ s journey archetype, as considered by Joseph Campbell, and its three main phases are evident in them.