PERSIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE (JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF LITERATURE AND HUMANITIES)
Year:2015 | Volume:22 | Issue:77 |Papers Count:13

Zarrin-gabā Nāmeh is one of the unknown epic poems, which has been named Asadi’s Shāhnameh, Rostam and Soleymān and Zarrin-gabāye Haft Lashkar in three different manuscripts. Its Shiite poet is unknown and probably wrote the poem in the Safavid period. The events of the story happen during Keykhosrow’s reign in Iran and the life of Soleyman the Prophet. It begins with the arrival of Zarrin-gabā, Soleyman’s messenger, to Iran to call the Iranians to accept the religion of Soleyman. Zarrin-gabā Nāmehis written in 23533 lines and it is mainly about Rostam and his sons including his grandchild Zarrin-gabā. The structure of these verses is narrative and folkloric.

Shab-e Hol is a novel which due to its time of publication in the midst of the Islamic Revolution was not well received has many structural and technical values for readers, writers, and critics. Because of the much complexity of the narrative and the difficulty of its reading, there are disagreements about the identity of the narrator and the chronological order of the narratives in the few reviews published on the novel. This paper focuses on the time and narrative in this novel and explains the ambiguities of time and narrative and the arrangement of the characters in Shab-e Hol. It further shows that the author consciously intended to write a modern novel and create doubts in the minds of his readers in order to reflect his philosophical insights affected by life in the modern era.

Metaphor is one of the most important entries in Rhetoric, at least in the classic meaning of the term. Today its most accepted definition, a trope indicating similarity, is the outcome of the efforts of great men such as Abdol Ghader Jorjani and Abu Yaghub Sakaki, who introduced and developed this theory in Islamic Rhetoric. Jorjani's theory of metaphor, which is the result of his deep investigation in the works of the ancient scholars and writers, shows a functionalist insight in to metaphor. The scholars of eloquence, Jorjan being the last in their chain, had a particular attention to the holy Quran in their study of rhetoric, which made them see that linguistic segments play an important role in reading the verses of the Quran. In his book, Miftah Al-Ulum, Sakaki, who followed Jorjani's theory, gives the theory another interpretation. While Jorjani had a deep insight in to the role of linguistic segments, Sakaki's literature-based view leads him to ignore the necessity of considering the function in metaphor. Comparing the views of these two theorists reveals that they have different ideas, not only regarding this issue but concerning so many other issues. The present study aims to investigate these differences and endeavours to show the differences of these two scholars on the definition and nature of metaphor and the way it should be treated.

One of the themes of romances is the fighting of the beloved. In Iran's mythical and legendary history names of women and mistresses like Golshah, Sarvkharaman, Gordafarid, Azra, and Sanambar are found who used to come to the battle field with their lover sand defend them like a male warrior. Such actions are extant in the greate pics or their reproduction and they have been so frequently repeated in romances that they have been turned in to regular themes. In this article the researcher attempts to introduce these poems and their beloveds and show the actions of the female warriors. Ten Stories are studied in this article, including Bano Goshasb Nameh, Rabe’e and Baktash, Sohrab and Gordafarid, The Iranian Princess in Thousand and One Nights, Heydarbeyk and Samanbar, The Killer Hero, Gordiehand Khosrow Parviz, Varghe and ​Golshah, Vamegh and Azra, Homay and Homayoun.

Psychological criticism has been founded on the theories of psychologists such as Freud and Jung though it is not restricted to these theories. What is important in this approach is the critic's understanding of these theories in order to apply them to reading the text and offer a new interpretation accordingly. "Esmaeil-e-Shoja" (“Brave Esmaeil”) is title of a short story by Houshang Moradi Kermani. The subject of the fiction is one of the subjects discussed in psychology: phobia or intense fear in childhood. In this article the researcher attempts to read the fiction in the light of current psychological theories. In this regard, first phobia is discussed and its symptoms have been mentioned. Then, its types, causes and treatments have been analyzed and all these items have been studied in the fiction. It is concluded that this fiction is helpful in curing children suffering from Phobia in the narrative therapy process.

In this article Shamlou’s poem “The Last Word” and its literary factors, which advance the discursive objectives of the poem are discussed. For this purpose, first, in microstructure all the sentences are studied, listed and categorized in ten groups according to Farshidvard’s model for mode of sentences. Then in macrostructure the discursive factors of the poem are studied according to Haliday and Hassan’s sample to provide us with an exact cohesive structure of the text to fulfill the discursive objectives. The results of the micro as well as macrostructure analysis of the poem are reflected in statistical tables, an abstract of which is included in this article. Moreover, the literary factors used to produce satire are also analyzed as discursive factors. The article shows that the poem has been designed on the basis of discursive opposition. Using discursive and literary factors, especially factors of satire, the poem supports the position of the poetics of the modernists and rejects that of the traditionalists, without observing the principals and logic of discourse.

The flags of the Kings and Heroes in Shahnameh and other epic texts are of important symbolic and ritual significance. The Symbolic signs and their characteristics on flags are important in the analysis of their owners’ personal, public and psychological characteristics. This archetypal approach to signs reflects Ferdowsi’s intention in expressing the function of some epic instruments, such as weapons, flags, horses and tents. In Shahnameh the matching of these signs and their implied cultural significance reflect their semiotic an archetypical power. So each of these signs and images like sun, moon, stars and animals—dragon, lion, wolf, tiger, and eagle-and colors such as black and purple show the complex texture of anthropological feature. This research is both descriptive and analytical and the researchers have consulted different dictionaries of symbols and highlighted the function of each image in its epic space considering the change of its meaning in time.

One of the main events of the Sassanid's period is the battles of Piruz against the Hephthalites, which despite the great efforts of the Iranians in these wars, they ended with their defeat and a huge tribute to be given to the Hephthalites. To compensate for his failure, Piruz the tyrant king waged another war against the Hephthalites. However, not only he achieved nothing, but he also lost his life. After these defeats, the Hephthalites used to intervene in the Iranians’affairs for a long time, until they finally disappeared during the reign of Anushiravan. Nonetheless, the bitter memories of these defeats never left the Persians' minds. So after these events, the Iranians manipulated some facts to maintain their dignity. They made some stories about those events and one of the stories was about a hero named Sufra who fought against the Hephthalites and eventually defeated them and brought back all that the Iranians had lost to them. These narratives most likely were present in the many Khodaynameh (s) of the Sassanid's period to enter then the history of the Islamic era. This article first examines Shahnameh and other historical narratives for Piruz's and Sufra's battles against the Hephthalites, and then shows the main distortions which entered Khodaynameh (s) in the Sassanid's period.

Narratologists often make a distinction between classical and modern narratives and contend that classical fiction mainly focuses on characteristics such as the intention of the author, the single and fixed meaning of the narrative, and its closure. In contrast, in modern fiction certain other elements are emphasized like the centrality of the reader, lack of closure, plurality of meaning, and intertextuality. However, with a glance at some classical texts like Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh this distinction can be challenged. For example, Ferdowsi employs certain mythological and symbolic narratives in his epic which had no place in classical literature and at the same time he warns the reader not to restrict himself to the surface meaning of the story. Thus he lifts the addressee to narrative addressee and makes his stories open-ended and open to interpretation.

The Jungian evaluation theory has not been fully used as a standard in analyzing the subject of the seven adventures (or Haft Khan) in Shahnameh. The main purpose of this research is to evaluate the psychological theory in the seven adventures of Rostam and of Esfandiar. By using it, we have attempted to find out the hidden aspects of the evolution of the hero’s personality in his adventures and consequently know the nature of the Jungian archetypes in the Persian epic. Therefore, the article tries to find out the relationship between the supreme Persian subject matters and Jungian theory. Moreover, the research has analyzed each of the basic Jungian elements (i.e. archetype, shadow, anima and animus, persona, etc.) in the seven adventures of Rostam and of Esfandiar, and then each of the elementary concepts in the two adventures have been decoded on the basis of the Jungian theory. It is concluded that all of the elements of the theory can be fully seen in the seven adventures of Rostam, repeatedly in some cases. The hero meets all of the Jungian archetypes in his seven adventures, and after winning them, he finally reaches the stage of individuation. On the contrary, the pattern does not have a regular order in the adventures of Esfandiar and there is no a clear reference to the archetype “Animus” in this adventure. Therefore, the seven adventures of Rostam, in comparison to that of Esfandiar, reflects the entire archetypes of Jungian theory.

Recounting or reading a story, a tale, or an anecdote in ceremonies has a long history in Iranian culture. A type of this tradition has been widespread in Ferdowsi’s era which emerged in the form of public reading of Shahnameh. Ferdowsi has acted masterfully in choosing words of special speech sounds being aware of his subject and audiences and thus has made listening to Shahnameh being read a delightful experience for the listeners. This research is both analytic and descriptive in method and shows that Ferdowsi has selected his diction with a special regard for its sound effect. These words either had the very widespread semantic scope or Ferdowsi himself expanded their semantic scope and thus attracted the attention of the listeners and made them attentive to finding the source of the sounds’ production. The researcher admits that the method of choosing diction which has been discussed in this article is not the only method which results in waiting and listening to the reading of Shahnameh has many other artistic methods to encourage anticipation in this huge work. This article studies Ferdowsi’s skill and innovation in making his language pleasant and effective and the reading of Shahnameh such an exciting and hilarious experience for both readers and listeners.