Journal of Literary Studies
Year:2014 | Volume:46 | Issue:4 (183)|Papers Count:6

This article studies the metaphors in Sanā'ī’s ghazals with the pivotal theme of love. The theoretical basis of the article is the theory of conceptual metaphor which has elevated metaphor from a mere rhetorical technique to a device of cogitation and cognition. At first, we present the principles of the theory considering the key words and terms coined by cognitive linguists and then give a detailed account of love metaphors in Sanā'ī’s poems. Next, based on the thematic type, we categorize the metaphors into three groups: the metaphors which express a positive view of love, the ones which designate love as having negative characteristics and features and the double-edged metaphors. Subsequently, we analyze each group cognitively. The next entry is the aesthetic and rhetorical study of the metaphors under which we elucidate the main techniques as employed by Sanā'ī, the innovator of the rhetoric of mystical ghazal.

Eschatology is a dominant theme in Sanā'ī Ghaznavi’s Seir al-Ebād and Abul’Ala Al-Ma’arri’s Risālat al-ghufrān - two works from the world of Islam in which the narrative structure is based on the journey of the soul. This study examines the concept of eschatology and briefly deals with the beliefs of different cultures and religions. It then proceeds with the study of three aspects of eschatology in the two mentioned works. The study includes eschatology in the narrative structure of the works, eschatological symbols, and ideological beliefs underlying the notion of eschatology.

In the prehistoric cultures, the annual ritual of death and re-birth of the vegetation god is a fundamental myth of the tragic romance about the relationship between the god and the fertility goddess or her human counterpart and her mate: the martyr lord- hero. Such accounts are closely linked with the early man’s thoughts concerning time cycle, the cyclical sequence of the calendar and the belief in the repeatability of the nature’s cycle of death and birth. These narratives have a universal pattern and in Persian epic poetry are connected with the story of Syavash and Sudabeh, primarily originating from the mythological account of the same story. The story is connected with the myth of Rapihwin’s descent into the underground (along with Winter) and his role in the preservation of nature, the warmth of waters and the fertility of earth and his subsequent return (along with Spring and rejuvenation of nature). The first part of this pattern is comparable with migration and mortality of Syavash and the second part with the return of Kai Khosrow.

Novel-in-stories which came into life around 1914 in western literary tradition has been considered a new genre in which different short stories are connected in a number ways. It has assumed different names and has been classified differently because of the various types of uniting tools used for creating the linked stories. In Iran, although Ebrahim Golestan’s first linked stories took the first step in 1969, his second short story collection went beyond the classification and created a new sub-genre called macrofiction. This paper is going to show what macrofiction is and how it can be formulated. According to this study, macrofiction is a sub-genre of novel-in-stories in which a similar schema in a number of short stories is transferred from the paratext. Consequently, the schema of one space as input 1 projects its features to the elements of another space as input 2. The short stories of a collection have a schematic string for blending and uniting a number of totally different stories. As a final point, macrofiction is made by textual schema refreshment and connects the stories in a coherent way.

Débat is one of the genres in Persian poetry. The poet employs this literary form to develop and express lyrical and didactic concepts (e.g. wisdom literature) and, at times, social themes. In spite of the fact that most of the modern poets ignore or do not pay enough attention to this literary form, Shafiei Kadkani, a current university poet and researcher, makes much of its potential in some of his poetry. In this research, while discussing the differences between classical and new forms of the genre, we particularly try to elaborate on the ingenious variations of the form in Shafiei Kadkani’s poetry. Results of this research show that the poet inspires a fresh soul into the corpse of the genre by introducing new insights and using some original techniques both in form and content.

Unlike modern prose, the prose of Tarikh-e Beyhaghi is highly flexible and at times varies based on the expediency factor; hence, it can be used as a very special tool in critical recension of Beyhaghi’s text and those with similar characteristics. To this end, the structures of those sentences different in two editions are determined; then by calculating the frequencies of those structures in the whole text, normal word orders are recognized. Expediency factor is also taken into account at the same time. This enables us to decide which sentence structure is closer to the normal style. This method of critical recension is unprecedented. To demonstrate how word order can be employed, we extract some sentences from Yahaghi and Seyyedi editions and compare them to that of Fayyaz.