PERSIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE (JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF LITERATURE AND HUMANITIES)
Year:2016 | Volume:23 | Issue:79 |Papers Count:11

The time, life, poetry, literary and critical theories of William Wordsworth, the pioneer of Romanticism in English literature, and Nima Youshij, who is often regarded as a Romantic in some part of his literary career, share many similarities. Both poets lived at a time of revolution and turmoil and both revolted against the dominant literary conventions of their time with their efforts accordingly leading to revolutions in the poetry and literary theory of their land. After delineating the accepted tenets of the Romantic Movement, this article highlights the analogous biographical, socio-economical and philosophical contexts of the two poets’ career and studies the affinities of their attempts at modernizing the poetic theory and practice of their countries. To this aim, the two poets’ attitude towards concepts such as poetry and the poet, content, language, feelings and emotions, and society are examined in detail. It is explained that by being influenced by their time and the historical evolutions in the age of social, cultural and economic revolutions, the two poets were able to bring the revolution into the poetry and critical theory and practice of their time. This revolution consists of realizing the novel concepts of the age and expressing them in a new form, which is considered as the commencement of “Modern” English poetry in England and “New” Persian poetry in Iran.

Pragmatics is related to language use in context. A single sentence can have different functions in different contexts. Hence, the meaning is the same as function and the function does not exist out of context; however, the type of sentence has a decisive role in inferring the right meaning. The interrogative sentence in Persian language has two types of rhetorical and non-rhetorical questions. The aim of rhetorical interrogative statement is to convey the message indirectly and more effectively. Qeysar Aminpour has employed interrogative statements in various and different ways in his five poetry books. The questions mentioned in each poetry book are the results of the poet’s social circumstances and his intellectual-emotional perceptions. By moving from the first period to the third one, the questions become more contemplative and realistic in terms of quality and intellectual aspects. Therefore, by investigating the intentions behind interrogatives based on time process, the intellectual-emotional metamorphosis of the poet can be recognized. Most of these intentions include: 1. Astonishment, 2. Doubt, 3. Criticizing, 4. Hope, and 5. Desperation. Astonishment in Qeysar’s poems moves from certainty in revolution and war goals to astonishment in self-discovery and achievement of the goals. His doubt is basically related to third period due to his astonishments including belief, pragmatic and realistic aspects. The most important intellectual-emotional metamorphoses of the poet include: 1. From certainty to uncertainty, 2. From utopia to real life, 3. From individualism to collectivism, 4. From attitude to insight or from observation to contemplation, 5. From winning the war to victory over the war, and 6. From despair to hope.

Despairing of God’s absolution is the most essential trait in Satan that has long been taken into consideration. In Masnavi and Shams Sonnets, Satan is regarded as an outcast, damned and hopeless character, but on special occasions, Rumi reveals hope to frustrated individuals and looks at creation story from a different perspective. This perspective is in line with tradition of defending Satan in our mystical culture, the tradition that is in contrast with traditional mystical approach to Satan, a narrow and obsolete but outstanding and thoughtful tradition. Although hinting at Satan’s hopefulness has been noticed in a few studies prior to Rumi, his eloquence and perspective in this area is unique, a perspective originated from his worldview. Noteworthy to say, even in the legacy of those mystics defending Satan there is not as much emphasis on this issues as Rumi’s and Satan mostly appears in the role of a tragic lover.

Rhetoricians have introduced five criteria for the identification of allusion. The aim of this study is to verify the fourth and fifth criteria and to examine their efficiency since they have caused obscurity and confusion in recognition and identification of allusions and created inconsistency between the definitions and the nature of allusions. Regarding the correctness and effectiveness of the fifth criterion, it can be said that allusion is not realized in the form of words or compound words since it involves a compound image that is essentially embodied in an allusive proposition. This proposition enjoys a prime meaning with an actual or imaginary instance and hence it paves the way for the connotative meaning. Allusions, therefore, should be called allusive propositions. Regarding the efficiency and correctness of the fifth criterion, it can be argued that due to the imaginary and pictorial nature of allusion, its surface or prime meaning cannot always be realized in external world. Therefore, the prime meaning of allusion has sometimes an external instance and sometimes an imaginary one. Hence, according to the nature of prime meaning it could be said that there are three kinds of allusive propositions: pictorial allusive propositions whose prime and connotative meanings are realizable in the external world; imaginary allusive propositions whose prime and connotative meanings are imaginable or recognizable in imaginary world; and poetic allusive propositions which contain metonymy, simile and metaphor and their prime meaning is realizable after uncovering the metonymies and metaphors. The prime and connotative meanings of this kind are realizable in the external world or imaginary world.

In addition to possessing some rhetorical and linguistic characteristics, question is one of the elements in generating creative thinking. More notable objectives of asking questions in creative thinking are as follows: indirect control of audience, obtaining information from him, evaluating and testing him, provocation of the thought in audience, guiding the thoughts in a specific direction and understanding the idea of audience. The question is less likely to be asked in a non-dialogue context, but asking question is the most significant element in moving the conversation forward in a dialogue context. The aim of the present study is to investigate the methods of guiding thought through asking question in Nasir Khosrow’s poetry. By applying educational and linguistic pragmatics and considering a semantic approach, questions are divided into rhetorical and philosophical categories, consisting of analogy, induction, and deduction. Finally, by referring to rhetorical questions as close-ended or convergent and considering philosophical questions as open-ended or divergent ones, it was concluded that Nasir-Khosrow used questions to create “positive self-consciousness" in his audience. It means that by considering individual differences in his readers, he does not disvalue and nullifies their previous beliefs, but by highlighting the significance of dialogue, he makes the audience reconsider it or think about other aspects of it.

The necessity of using modern literary knowledge in evaluating the Quranic texts and the writings based on the Quranic teachings is clear and necessary for Muslim researchers in today's world. In this research, the structure of Joseph’s (pbuh) Tale in the translation of Tafsir-e-Tabari (the Persian translation of Tabari’s Commentary of the Quran) has been evaluated by using Propp’s morphology. To achieve a more appropriate conclusion, this tale has been divided into four stories and its characters and their functions have been critically analyzed in each story. The number of the characters and the manner of their functions clearly demonstrate the structure of this tale on the basis of Propp’s theory. The movements of three stories out of four in the mentioned tale have followed Propp’s sextuple movement pattern; only in the second story of this tale, a two cross-sectional movement is seen that is not adaptable to Propp’s movement patterns and is considered as a new movement. Propp in his ideas has considered the religious roots and his morphology theory has been very efficient in studying Joseph’s (pbuh) tale. Since Propp has paid attention to structures rather than superstructures and quantitative details, his ideas are also helpful in studying the other tales. Finally, the author suggests that all the Quranic tales can be evaluated from a structural perspective on the basis of Propp’s ideas to find out the fundamental structure of these tales.

Immigration Persian literature is an important part of Iran's contemporary literature that uses the Narrative genre to express issues and concerns of the immigrants in the host country. This research by using a hybrid approach of Narratology and postcolonial studies attempts to analyze the genre of Immigration Persian novel and endeavors to answer the question whether Immigration Persian literature is a kind of postcolonial Narratology. The research concludes that Immigration Persian literature is postcolonial narrative in kind and is written for defending the minority and the marginalized immigrants in the host country and giving them power and ability to speak. It is written by the postcolonial immigrant author using strong words and form of narrative in the so-called third space. The major concern of the immigrant writer in embracing such a genre is bringing the marginalized immigrant to center and presenting their desires, interests, and especially their narrative.

By looking at Afghanistan novel writing and its ups and downs, some realities about intellectual and literary developments of this society become clear for the audience that require extensive research. One of these realities is Modernism and Postmodernism in the fictional literature of Afghanistan which links the Afghan novelists' society with the contemporary fiction writing society and illustrates the life aspects of an Afghan, especially the life of intellectuals in this country. This article is an attempt to reflect the important Modernist and postmodernist trends of novel writers in Afghanistan through a descriptive-analytical approach by exploring the contemporary novels in Afghanistan after the coup of 7th of Sur (April), 1357. The results suggest that we cannot speak of institutionalization of modernist and postmodernist novel writing in the fictional literature of Afghanistan, but there is an increasing growth of elements and components such as identity crisis of fictional characters, consequences of war and migration of Afghan men and women, attempts to deconstruct the opposition of man / woman in Afghanistan’s male-dominated writing system, representation of intensive confrontation between traditionalism and modernism, etc. This indicates the emergence of new literary styles in fictional literature in Afghanistan, Quasi-modernist and sometimes Quasi-postmodern styles, which often have been adapted by emigrant intellectuals, following and imitating the western techniques of fiction writing.

Fariba Wafi is a successful writer who described the family and social life of contemporary Iranian women and bringing them into the real-life stories trying to show their problems. This research is an attempt to investigate Fariba Wafi's collection of short stories Even when We Laugh by following Fairclough's approach to critical discourse analysis. In Fiarclough's approach, a text is checked on three different levels. The three levels are: 1. The description level, which is based on formal analysis, grammar, vocabulary, pronouns, verbs and adverbs modality; 2. The interpretation level of the text, which is based on situational context and analyzes the intertextual factors; and 3. Explanation level that explains the production of texts and the dominant discourse and ideology and power play in the text. Discussing the text of the stories on all three levels reveal the following points: 1. Description and use of the words "wife" and "husband" and frequency indicative verbs and adverbs reflect the author's commitment to the truth of the prepositions of the story 2. The frequency of the pronoun "we" reflects the author's identification with all women. 3. In the interpretation of this collection, she questions the living conditions of women under the influence of feminist writers, such as Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir 4. In the explanation, it is clear that the women's stories depend on the patriarchal power of men. Although in Wafi’s short stories, women live in today's world and apparently are freed from the shackles of traditional society, in reality they are under the dominance of the psychological and male-dominated society and the patriarchic traditions, so that their identity depends on the presence of a man like husband, brother, and the like.

The faults and inconsistencies found in semantics have undermined the place of this scientific field in literary studies and its importance in understanding the beauty of the texts and its capacity in analysis of literary issues. These faults often arise from lack of scientific method and clear definition of the principles of semantics. The aim of this research is to review, critique and explain 'omission and mention', which is one of the major questions of semantics. ‘Mention and omission’ are among the most important rhetoric tools of the Persian poets and writers variously and repeatedly used over the course of literary history. Therefore, its explanation along with the analysis of its rhetorical effects has been at the center of attention since the early periods.