Journal of Comparative Literature
Year:2012 | Volume:NEW SERIES - 3 | Issue:6|Papers Count:16

A great part of wondrous books (‘Ajayeb Nameh) describes functions and features of beings such as Divs, Qouls, Jins, devils and monsters. These monsters create a wonderful fantasy for the books and lead the audience to the generic tradition. The authors have known the audience of such books and their needs, so they have tried to make an amazing wonderful world by mythic and folk elements.On the other hand, a lot of narratives in these kinds of books found their way in popular culture again; therefore many beliefs, idioms, proverbs, adages and folk anecdotes were rooted in them.The fantastic imagination is vague and very limited in the first generations of such books, but in later versions the complex imaginary themes about supernatural being’s life and functions have formed; then a kind of “fantastic literature” was created gradually.One of the oldest as well as most famous Persian wondrous books (‘Ajayeb Nameh) is ‘Ajayeb al-MaxlUqan o yarayeb al-Mojoudat written by Mohammad Zakaria Qazvini in 12th century, and one the latest one of such books written by Mir Mahmoud Fozouni Astarabadi in 17th century named Bohaira.

This study tried to examine the viewpoint of Jibran khalil Jibran and Sohrab Sepehri about religion and religious pluralism. With a little consideration and reflection, we came to an understanding that their religious ideas were not identical. Sohrab Sepehri and Jibran Khalil Jibran, popular contemporary poets, tried to spread the belief about legitimacy of all religions. What is obvious in their works was that they believed not only in their religion un-biasedly but also in supra-ethnic religion.In addition, they believed that although religions differed at a superficial level, they have the same origin. In fact, they believed in a kind of pantheism, thus Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and other religious thoughts were the same for both. Consequently, Jibran was accused of atheism and heresy, and Sohrab of aristocratic Buddhism.

Manteq_Al_Tayr is one of the Islamic Persian mystical masterpieces, written by Attar, which expresses the progress of the soul with a narrative structure in a format of an allegory of birds flying to the Qaf Mountain, the place on which Simorq dwells. These birds pass seven valleys to reach mountain Qaf and finally in seventh valley find out they are in unity with Simorq.Christian mysticism, also have been appropriate ground for literary masterpieces to be created. One of these works is Interior Castle written by S.T. Teresa of Avila, the Spanish nun in sixteenth century. In this book the progress of the soul in seven mansions of a castle, which Teresa had seen in one of her revelations, has been imagined. In central mansion, the soul meets Lord and reaches a unity with Him.Because of the similarity between Manteq_Al_Tayr and Interior Castle, and also because of common mental and cultural background of these books, the following question was considered: What are the structural and conceptual similarities and differences between these two works? A comparative analysis would answer this question.

Ebtehaj and Al-Feitouri were two competent contemporary poets, who were intellectually close together due to their common unfavorable social conditions. The trends followed by both these poets can be studied in social romanticism. The most important works produced by both are related to the time when they deplored the conditions of their countries. The comparative study of their works revealed that although traces of individualist romanticism were manifested in their works, the social themes of their poems were in line with social romanticism. They both combined romanticism with dynamic revolutionary literature in their poetry. In this article, the commonalities of their thoughts and overlaps between concepts raised in their poems were addressed. Features such as attention to social issues, commitment to the homeland, the role of love in defense, and lyrical look at social issues were compared and discussed.

Ibn-e-Arabi and Moulavi are two contemporary poets and mystics who lived in the seventh Hejri century. The former is a representative of west Islamic world and the latter is representative of a continuation of Gnostic wave particularly from Khorasan.Ibn-e-Arabi is best known for introducing Islamic mysticism in his master-piece called “Fotouhat-e-Makiye” and “Fosus-al-Hekam”.Moulana’s ideas are definitely but delicately expressed In his literary masterpiece “ Masnavi Manavi” which is considered the most important work in Persian literature.This article tried to clarify these two Gnostic’s ideas about women and their status in mysticism based on some proof from the previously mentioned books. The similarities and differences of their point of view about the issue were also discussed in detail.

Nowadays, various definitions for intertextual readings have emerged in the sphere of comparative literature. But the common grounds between them are the conviction that intertextual readings have lots of potentialities. Based on this approach, the artistic manifestation of literary works can be classified and the relation and reciprocal reaction between them can be examined. In fact, an intertextual approach can exceed the limits of studying the effects literary texts have upon one another and speak of a new role for the reader as an influential agent in creating new meanings in the literature of the world.While offering a detailed description of intertextual reading, the present paper tried to show how this approach was a penetrating approach on the memory of literature, through observing the different and various versions of A Thousand and One Nights, specifically in French Literature. It was a research on the essence, scope and objectives which made literature a reference in itself. And finally, it was a study of the factors which prevented literature to merely rewrite previous texts and guided them towards works which bore no similarity to their original source.

Joseph and Zuleikh a story is basically a religious story and has been used by different poets in various historical eras. The poets who have versified this story have made use of the old testament, Quran and other related commentaries. Therefore, one reason for the distinction between these verses could be the difference of the sources they have used which are mainly Quran, commentaries and the old testament. A comparative study of four Collections of poetry based on the story of Joseph and Zuoleikha by Jami, Khavari and Ferdowsi and finally the Arabic Collection called Nahayat-al-arab fi fonon -al-adab by Ahmad- Al-Noviri revealed that all these four poets used the Quranic version of this story more than the other versions while Ferdowsi and Ahmad-Al- Noviri considered the old testament after Quran more than the other two.

This paper studied and compared social and humanitarian content in the poetry of contemporary Iranian poet, Mahdi Akhavan Saaless and contemporary Lebanese poet, Ilia Abomazi, based on French school of comparative literature. Both poets employed poetry for expressing social issues. There were many social images in their poems and even expressing emotions was based on social sentiments rather than personal feelings.Basic method of library research and citation was applied in this approach. Common social domains in the poetry of both poets were discussed in the paper and it was concluded that social arguments including, liberty, human, resistance against Occidentalism, and fight against poverty formed essential basis of their verses.

The section on “Mastery and Slavery”, one of the influential sections of Hegel’s phenomenology of spirit, deals with the Master/Slave dialectic as a form of consciousness that is indispensable to Hegel’s account of formation of the self. In this section two self-conscious senses meet and engage in a “life and death struggle” that concludes in the enslavement of one and the victory of the other. The victor is the master and the enslaved is the slave. Hegel emphasizes that in the relation of master and slave, “mutual recognition” is crucial and both sides need to acknowledge the value of the other.The aim of this research was to examine the possibility of tracing Master/Slave dialectic in Bahram Beyzaie’s Deane o Yazdge d and Lord Byron’s Sadranapalus. This aim was achieved through a review of relevant literature and analysis of the plays. The research was important in order to provide a philosophical reading of the selected plays as well as a comparative study of them. The findings underlined that Master/Slave dialectic was traced in both plays; however, neither the kings nor their people possessed the qualities required for the continuation of the dialectic. Moreover, in both works, the lack of “mutual recognition” between the king and his people encouraged the “life and death struggle”. Nevertheless, in these plays the struggle did not amend the dialectic but destroyed it because one side of the struggle was killed in the end.

Although being criticized and objected in west, the study of supranational purports is one of the widest areas of research in contemporary comparative studies. Subject is a historical and cultural substance which is and important element of the text, so it can be analyzed and studied. Some subjects and purports are supranational and universal such as freedom, peace, war, justice, death, love, and intellect. Comparative study in this field can explain the history of thoughts and ideas of two or more nations at different periods of time and tell us where they come from. One of the universal subjects that is very important in the Islamic culture and is raised lots of objections among people is the intellect which has different meanings. Therefore, literal and conceptual schools take different meaning from it. The meaning of intellect has entered to literature, so some of the literalists are called rationalist. Naser Khosro Ghobadiani and Abolala Maari are two representatives of intelectualism in Persian and Arabic literature.The aim of this research was to present their point of views about rationalism and intellect, to take the meaning of intellect and its function, and to show that, although there were some similarities between these two rationalists but there were some differences in the way they look at the world.

Among the literary works in the world, there are some similarities between novel of the Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and the tale of the Sheikh San’an in the Manteq At’teir by Sheikh Attar, which make them comparable. The theme of both tales is seeking perfection and felicity as well as following the direction from apparent perfection to a real stage of perfection. Both Siddhartha and Sheikh San’an have high degree of perfection and felicity in the people’s point of view; however they left everything and engage in seeking. Love has a characteristic role in both tales, so the basic change of both characters starts with earthly love and brings them to the denouement. In this article the similarities were represented at first based on the structural analysis including the characterizations, actions, turns, conceptual language and background of the two texts. Then, the reason of the actions were compared and presented beside the conceptual similarities and differences between two tales.

The author of the book “The limit of the world” believed that the zone of Kerman included the current province of Kerman, except Rafsanjan toward west and south, as well as the current provinces of Baluchestan and Hormozgan.He considered Kerman as the second largest province in Iran, after Khorasan and described its cities, important villages, mountains, deserts, and the rivers.His objective was to write the Persian names of this place in order to prevent them from being recorded in Arabic writing system and preserve the national identity.

This research was a comparison of Saadi and Jan Dewey’s educational thought in order to get acquainted with educational thoughts of Saadi as Iranian and Moslem intellectual and that of Dewey as an American educational philosopher, and to specify similarities and differences in their thoughts. In this research, which was done based on the descriptive analysis method, first their opinions about education, nature of a child, the process of education, religious education, importance of a teacher, purpose of education, method of teaching, a tendency toward education and child centrality was studied.The study revealed that in the case of tendency toward education and purpose of education, there were similarities in their opinions. But in cases such as method of teaching, nature of a child, importance of religious education, and the role of a teacher, there were different ideas. The important subject was that both of them emphasized and considered the significance of experience in Learning. However, Dewey combined the concept of experience with scientific experiment as well as scientific method and gave it a wider meaning.