PERSIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE (JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF LITERATURE AND HUMANITIES)
Year:2013 | Volume:21 | Issue:74 (19)|Papers Count:6

Many researchers in the field of socio-linguistics, sociology and feminism have done research on the principle of language showing that there are some differences between the language of men and women. The question is that whether gender plays any role in literary language (poetry) and besides phonetic, lexical and syntactic levels of language if images, such as simile and metaphor, are gender-oriented and are influenced by the mentality of women poets. In this research the influence of gender on the use of simile and metaphor in the poetry of ten contemporary Iranian women poets have been studied. First, one or two collections of the poetry of these poets have been randomly chosen, and second the two main figures of simile and metaphor have been analyzed in respect of gender. It is concluded that due to differences between men and women, such as their social and biological background, women poets use gender oriented similes and metaphors. Moreover, they use these types of similes and metaphors to express their romantic and sensual-emotional tendencies.

Having published his first novel, Ali Mohammad Afghani (born in 1925, Kermanshah) reached the top of his literary career. Considering the dearth of creative literary activities in the years following the coup of 18th August 1953 and other social, literary and historical reasons discussed in the paper, the novel (written in 1961) was remarkably acclaimed by the readers. Following this acclamation, literary critics also appreciated the author as the greatest contemporary novelist and his work as the greatest novel of the century. Although Afghani wrote several other novels, because of certain reasons discussed in the article he could never regain the acceptance of the readers. Now after half a century of the publication of the novel and its becoming one of the classics in the history of contemporary novel-writing in Iran, we have a new study of the role Ali Mohammad Afghani and his outstanding book in the formation and development of Persian novel. Moreover, we try to show how he has been affected by earlier narrative literature and his impact on subsequent novels. In order to clarify the reasons behind the books popularity with the readers and its position among Persian novels, the sociological and literary dimensions of the work are discussed in this article.

Why did Rumi have empathy with the rulers of Seljuk and Mongols invaders in Konya, while Mongols destroyed Baghdad, the capital of Islamic Caliphate, and killed the Caliph? This question has remained an enigma to many Rumi scholars. This paper examines the political behavior of Rumi as an influential jurist and mystic, exploring the theoretical foundations of his behaviors. To clarify the issue, I have examined Rumi’s political behavior based on historical evidence at three levels: (1) the structure of power in Konya and Rumi’s relation with his contemporary politicians; (2) the relation between Rumi’s political behavior and his political unconscious; and (3) the cause of the inconsistency between Rumi’s political actions and his political thought. I have concluded that the verse “obligation to obey the Muslim Sultan” in the Quran acts as an ideological axiom that justifies appealing to cruel rulers by Muslims and cooperating with them. Ideology as a huge force prevents Rumi and his society from understanding this fundamental contradiction. In other words, ideology naturalizes all the contradictions for its followers.

The study of binary oppositions in art and literature has attracted some contemporary linguists, mythologists, narratologists and semiologists. They maintain that one may get a better understanding of the literary work through these binary oppositions. In this study attempt is made to have another look at the poems of Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafiz by considering binary opposition as one of the central elements and main features of his poems. For this purpose, 100poems have been selected randomly. In these poems 637 binary oppositions are seen indicating that in each sonnet there are 4 to 6 cases of binary opposition. The binary oppositions are grouped in three parts: verbal and lexical (35%), semantic and conceptual (54%), and literary (11%). Semantic pairs are repeated more often in the poems of Hafiz, which give his Ghazalstheir distinctive feature.

In this paper, Persian short storyis studied in the light of Tzvetan Todorov’s Narrative Theory. The hypothesis of this research is that there are various types of relations among the sequences, and each relation serves one or more functions. For this purpose, seven collections of Persian short stories written by outstanding writers were selected. These collections consist of 63 short stories, beginning with Jamalzadeh, the founder of this genre in Persian literature, and ending with Ahmad Mahmoud covering a period of fifty years. After analyzing deductively the selected stories it is demonstrated that there are many kinds of relations among the sequences of narratives, such as contrastive relation, memorial relation and stichomythic relation. In addition, each of these relations serves some functions, such as prescience, foregrounding of the story’s content and creation of suspense.

In modern aesthetics, the form of a poem is not enough to explain its artistic beauty. Therefore, a there is a comparative tendency to study the effect of the social environment on the personality and the taste of the poet, which leads to the study of literary works on the basis of psychology and sociology of literature. The researchers in this paper follow a descriptive-analytical approach and employ some interdisciplinary sciences, such as psychology, sociology, anthropology and linguistics, to study the aesthetic element of color in the poetry of one of the most prominent Modernist poets of Tajikistan, Farzaneh Khojandi. It is concluded that the poet is influenced by the colorful social and cultural environment of Tajikistan and employ color to describe his ethical views in the best way. Moreover, besides using the dominant symbols in Persian poetry, he introduces new symbols and diction in regard of colors and thus enriches Persian language and poetry.