Journal of Literary Studies
Year:2013 | Volume:46 | Issue:3 (182)|Papers Count:6

Realistic writing has not been as much the focus of attention as non-realistic modes in Persian literature. The socio-political literature of the Constitutional Period led the mindset of people in big cities, particularly the capital city, away from supernatural concerns to earthly and humanistic life. Upon the appearance of newspapers, Persian prose moved towards simplicity and reality. Journalism intensified the development of realistic writing; moreover, the attention given by Iranian journalists to critical social realities led them to the composition of social stories in the form of feuilleton. Thus realistic novel entered literary arena simultaneous with the development of the modern state bourgeoisie. This paper illustrates the backgrounds to the formation of Persian realistic novel from the perspective of literary history since Constitutional Period and pursues the Persian language trend of movement towards realism and the birth of realistic fiction out of journalism. The most significant issues discussed here include: transition from historical novel to social novel, linguistic transformations and social reality, journalism and realism, pioneers of Persian realism, recurrent themes of realistic works, the shortcomings of early realistic novel and its sociological values.

In linguistics, the relation between syntax and thought is expressed by verbs and their relationship with subjects, objects and predicates.  This link, in turn, creates grammatical voices such as active, passive and so on. Grammatical voice indicates the writer's attitudes towards and viewpoints on a subject and reflects his/her mental and spiritual state. Grammatical voice can be employed to compare the moods of different poets. In this article, we seek to examine and compare the grammatical voice in three ghazals by Ebtehaj, Naderpour and Farrokhzad and relate it to the School Romanticism using statistical analysis. These ghazals are an imitation of one of Sa’di's poems. Results indicate that in the chosen poem the active voice is used more because of the conversation taking place between the lover and the beloved. Farrokhzad has used newer language strategies in her poem as compared with the other two.

First person plural narrative (“we” narrative) is a style which started one hundred years ago in writing fiction; however, it is only for two decades that critics have come to pay attention to it. In some studies, special features of this type of narrative have been the main focus of concern and, in some others, its practical aspects have been examined. In this article, first we describe the theories of three critics: Uri Margolin, Brian Richardson and Amit Marcus. Then, five short stories of Hooshang Golshiri are analyzed based on these theories. We have tried to examine the applicability of the theories on one hand and to recognize some unknown dimensions of the stories on the other. The result shows that although these theories are useful in text analysis, there are still many unknown aspects in this form of narrative. The result also shows that Golshiri has employed various forms of the “we” narrative in a creative way.

The purpose of authors in this paper is to analyze Bayazid’s uses of cognitive metaphors.  He was as one of the pioneers and prominent Sufis of love mysticism. The paper explains some key concepts in Bayazid’s mysticism and refers to some features of his personality. This study examines the uses of wine, fire and flood domains in his sayings and reveals his emphasis on the concept of mortality (i.e. fana) in his mystical thoughts. It also shows that the frequently noticeable presence of the ‘light’ source domain in his words results from the impact of the social and cultural environment of the Zoroastrian ambience of his time. In addition, the analysis of Bayazid’s cognitive metaphors delineates his vacillation between asceticism and mystical love.

Zurvanism is one of the oldest sects related to primitive human life style and thoughts. One of the most outstanding doctrines of this sect is determinism and believing in the influence of fate on human destiny. Although there are few traces of Zurvanism in the Avestan texts, they assume a prominent position in Pahlavi texts through which they find their way into Arabian and Persian literature. One of the most important sources of investigation about this system of thought is the Gurani culture and literature. This language dates back to Achaemenid era. “Dinu” is an example of Zurvanist influence on the Gurani culture. In a dialogue between the poet and the village of his residence, he is complaining about his fate and fortune. This paper introduces, transcribes, translates and examines the lexis of this song using a descriptive method.

Apart from its ancient history, narratology has opened new territory in text analysis with the theories of people like Genette, Todorov and Barthes in recent decades. Genette believes that the relations between text-time and story-time cause different situations one of which being repetition frequency. Repetition frequency is the frequency of referring to an event which has happened only once. After the narration of the same event by Ferdowsi, the story of the birth of Zal, his father’s rejection and his being raised by Simurgh, are heard nine more times from Sam, Zal and Esfandiyar albeit in different forms and with different intentions. This subject has been analyzed based on narration-time. To further clarify the point, subjects such as narrative levels and reliability or unreliability of narrator have been studied. Ferdowsi as a historical narrator interferes with his own retrospective narration in different ways. Then certain characters in the story repeat the same account with “purposeful” additions and removals. Apart from the accounts given by Sam and Zal, that of Esfandiyar’s is fundamentally different from the other two.