HISTORY OF LITERATURE (JOURNAL OF HUMAN SCIENCES)
Year:2013 | Volume:- | Issue:71/3|Papers Count:14

Social stratification, or the system of social inequalities, has always been present throughout history as a concrete reality, and social thinkers have discussed it in different ways. Poets and writers have also reflected this social phenomenon in their works. Renowned Persian poet of the seventh century, Sa’adi, has paid attention to social stratification, especially in his Golestan, which is a precise reflection of the society in which the poet lived. Since the seventh century is a sensitive time socially, Sa’adi’s works can answer many important historical questions concerning this period. This important issue, however, has not been scientifically analyzed so far. The main purpose of this research is to investigate social stratification in Sa’adi’s Golestan and provide a clear perspective on the poet’s ideas about the social structure of early seventh century. The methodology is descriptive content analysis. Research sample is Sa’adi’s Golestan and the analysis unit is word. Research instrument is representative indicators for measurement of social stratification that content validity was used for the validity and the reliability was determined by retest methods. The findings show that Sa’adi has had a comprehensive view of social stratification and names 90 different social stratums in his work. He has a functionalistic approach towards social stratification and always tries to base his approach on ethics.

Since its emergence, comparative literature has gone through various stages and theorized in different ways. Theorists and scholars have defined comparative literature according to the social conditions of their time and based on their perspective, goal and knowledge of literature. They have studied literary works of other nations either from an equal, or from a superior or inferior point of view. Comparative literature, however, is the result of the bond and common heritage of all people or what the German poet Goethe calls the world literature (Welt literature). Before its formal and academic appearance in universities, this common knowledge existed among people as part of trade relations, journeys, translations, and even destructive and ominous events such as wars. Since every nation has a role in the emergence of global culture and civilization, comparative literature has turned into a common heritage for all nations, and many countries have defined and interpreted it from their own special perspective, and defined a set of standards and principles for it. This article tries to explore the conceptual changes that comparative literature has gone through in different literary schools (French School, German School, American School, East European School, etc.) The writer will try to introduce elements influential in the emergence of various concepts and their dissemination in order to explain the status, importance and role of Persian literature in the global common heritage as well as its appeal to people of different nations.

History of literature, its necessity and compilation are among the subjects which have been discussed by researchers and literary critics over the past two decades. Each of them has studied the history of literature from a different perspective, found errors in books written on the history of literature and offered suggestions for correcting the errors and the compilation of the history of literature shared by most critics. Some critics say they would prefer to dedicate history of literature only to literary texts and exclude scientific texts-which have been the focus of literary historians so far-. This article discusses the connection between literature and science as well as the time when this connection started and the process it went through. It also tries to find out whether we can disconnect literary texts, especially prose, from scientific texts and write an independent history of literature for them.

Grotesque is a technique or style in arts and literature, which has been defined in diverse and complicated ways. Some refer to it as ‘combined humor’ and attribute characteristics such as irregularity, horror, exaggeration, satire and fun to it. Some others have defined it as a way of communication for people who do not follow social and literary rules. one can say that ‘Stories of the Mad’ in Attar’s Masnavi books can be considered examples of the grotesque in Persian literature, and can be analyzed and described by the characteristics that have been defined for this technique. These stories are somehow close to mysterious, colloquial and satirical forms of the grotesque because of their two-sided and sometimes multifaceted concepts, which are presented in a humorous form with deep meanings. This study uses conceptual analysis to present a different reading of Attar stories based on the principles of the grotesque. The research aims to show that the Persian poet made use of this style far before the twentieth-century writers came to know about it.

One of the most popular genres in traditional and folk literature is the love story. There are more than 600 Persian manuscripts and printed works of this genre in both prose and poetry. Great poets have paid special attention to this genre in order to either create a literary school or enjoy the mere fun of it. This great volume of work has not been categorized and analyzed so far. In this article, the writer tries to categorize Persian love stories based on the type of lovers, theme, historical origins, geographical origins, originality of the narrative, ending, type of love, language, and the method of presentation. A general introduction will first be presented to love stories and their development throughout history. This article and the suggested categories will pave the way for further and better studies of love stories.

Historical studies mostly use periodization to categorize historical information. Periodization divides historical information based on a chronological order. This article explores the background of ideological philosophical foundations and the role of periodization in history in general and the history of literature in particular. Periodization is an old concept, which has undergone broad changes with the passage of time. This article shows the way that periodization has been used in the history of literature. It is, therefore, necessary to discuss the relation between periodization in general history and literary history first. Literary historians use the concept of periodization in different meanings which come from different philosophical and ideological sources. Understanding these foundations is necessary for a better comprehension of structural patterns resulted from them, in this case periodization. Although great efforts have been made to distinguish between literary history and literary criticism since the beginning of the 20th century, periodization as an act that determines the structure of literary history books, is itself considered an act of criticism and has an essential role in literary studies.

Irony is a technique of indirect utterance and artistic imaging, and one of the four elements of the art of speech, whose literal meaning is syntagmatic, and whose implications are paradigmatic. The real beauty of irony, like that of any imaginary picture, lies in its originality. Some ironies have been used so often that they have acquired a fixed meaning and turned into lexical ironies. In Nima Yushij’s poems one can find examples of both traditional and innovative types of irony. Lexical ironies can be mostly found in his traditional and semi traditional works, while innovative ironies can be seen in his modern poems. Nima, however, has retouched some lexical ironies and presented a new meaning based on the context of the poem. This research has pulled out and categorized the ironies used by Nima in all his traditional, semi-traditional and modern poems, pointing out the poet’s innovations in this area.

One should confess to this reality that imitation is far from Golshiri stories. Selectiveness and concision is clearly seen in works of Golshiri and his fellow townsman Bahram Sadeqi which they present along with a modern style. That is why their writing is categorized as postmodern. The other feature which is a source of marvel to any reader is the outstanding co-existence of form and content in the works of both writers despite their reputation as formalistic authors. Readers wonder whether structure has been more important for them or theme. When it comes to literary adaptation, Golshiri has a special method of his own, which can be called adaptations in the realm of creativity or stimulations for the mind. When recreating famous historical and literary stories, he treats them as poets of Indian and Isfahan school treated poetic motifs. Just like poets of Indian and Isfahan schools who portrayed the elements of motifs and opened their minds to new discoveries, Gloshiri presents a totally different and modern version of stories by using the original names and material with a different mindset. These versions have a nonnarrative structure- especially evident in Golshiri’s ‘The Innocent’-which is considered a justification of postmodernism. The motif or the original story can, therefore, be interpreted in a new way, which nobody had thought about before.

It has always been a challenge for researchers to present a text which is close to the product of a poet or writer’s mind. That is why works of great Persian literary figures undergo multiple corrections and amendments. Works by Abdolqader Bidel, however, have not undergone such process and it seems unfair to pay such little attention to a poet as great as Bidel who has had an undeniable role in the growth and expansion of Persian language and literature.This research aims to introduce three manuscripts of Bidel’s Sonnets housed at Maulana Azad Library (Aligarh Muslim University), Rampur Raza Library and Khodabakhsh Library of Patna. The writer will first compare and criticize the works in this area based on the presented samples and then explore the characteristics, strength and weaknesses of each manuscript with expertise reasons and examples.The reason for conducting such a study is the lack of an edited version of Bidel’s collected works. The paper aims to introduce the three manuscripts as reliable texts in a scientific editing process.

Biography writing is the earliest form of writing used for recording the history of Persian literature. Biographies, no matter in what form, are useful for understanding a part of the history of literature and act as the basis of study for today’s researchers. One of these Persian biographies is called Lobab al-Albab written by Sadidoddin Mohammad Oufiin 1221 CE. The book is also known as the first Persian biography whose second volume includes biographies of 169 poets and a selection of their works.Among these poets is QatranTabrizi from whom 74 lines of poetry, including an ode have survived. In order to correct Qatran’s collection of works, no old text of which is available, one should first study the works cited of him in biographies, especially in Lobab al-Albab. Writers of this article have drawn out and presented some differences between the existing versions of Qatran’s collection of poems.

Gender equality slogans put forth by Iran’s constitutionalists resulted in a reassessment of women’s social roles and extended their presence in the field of literature. Women’s literature has not had a steady growth since Iran’s constitutional era, but what we know as the independent female literature in the late 80s is the result of all changes that have come upon women’s literary fiction throughout the century. After the 1340s Iranian fiction writers found the courage to discuss feminine themes in their works and protest against male hegemony. What distinguishes female stories of the 80s from those of previous decades is the formation of an independent and feminine world and language, which are consciously created and are accompanied by feminist undertones.

Persian literature during the pre-Islamic era mostly depended on oral tradition so that oral narration was considered a virtue. One of the most important pillars of literary tradition in ancient Persia was the accompaniment of written verse with the music performed by court minstrels. In the post-Islamic era, even though the tradition of writing and the desire for metric poetry formed the foundations of Dari Persian literature, ancient traditions continued to exist as an important element. This connection between the two eras can be seen in the poems of Roudaki and some other poets of the Khorasani school. Some poetry of this era can be divided into metric and lyric poems, the latter being something between Pahlavi musical verses and Persian metric poetry. The social status of poets and court minstrels of this era was similar to that of great minstrels of ancient Persia such as Barbad. With the passage of time, however, metric poetry dominated the literary tradition, minstrels lost their eminent social status and lyric poetry lost its former value. This study discusses the status of oral tradition and minstrelsy in Persian literature and what became of it in the Islamic era, based on textual and historical evidence.

Have Persian epic stories been an independent and strong literary movement in the history of Persian literature? Is there a set of common themes, which have been copied by all storytellers and writers throughout history? Has Ferdowsi’s Shanameh been influential in the historical development of Persian epic stories?In order to find answers to the above-mentioned questions, the writers of this article have done the followinga. First they re-read four Persian epic stories (namely Samak Ayyar, Darabnameh, Joneydnameh and Amir Arsalan) and then introduced an underlying pattern of epic and chivalry, supernatural, romance and generosity themes which have been used and copied by storytellers and writers for centuries.b. The final part investigates the direct and obvious influence of Iran’s national epic Shahnameh on the formation of epic stories. No research has been conducted on the value, importance and status of prose epic narrations so far and therefore the writers of this article have tried to highlight the importance of this movement through studying the relevant elements.

Stylistic features of Persian poetry during Iran’s pre-constitutional era have been precisely discussed in different and numerous sources. What has been left untouched, however, is the existence of basic theses and theories that form those features. It seems that the stylistic changes in Persian poetry have occurred based on a major set of rules and theories and therefore the styles have changed whenever those rule or theories have undergone alterations. This research aims to identify those theses and theories and discuss their role in the stylistic changes of Persian poetry in their historical context.