Journal of Literary Studies
Year:2012 | Volume:44 | Issue:4 (175)|Papers Count:7

In the Iranians’ system of thought, the habitable cities had such great importance that their constructions were attributed to the kings especially the Sasanians in the historical and geographical works and also in Ferdowsi’s Shah-name. In the first part, this essay seeks to gather and classify various examples and analyze the construction model of cities and their specifications in ancient Iran based on two groups of sources: historical and geographical works and accounts on the one hand and Ferdowsi’s Shah-name on the other. In the second part, the study intends to investigate the traditional functions, appearance and names of cities, and to mention the differences between historical accounts and Ferdowsi’s Shah-name and their causes.

Buddhist temples in Balkh and the portrait of Buddha on Sassanid coins imply Buddhism’s spread to Khorasan, one of the originating places of Sufism. Contiguity and frequent travels between Islamic and Buddhist regions also caused the promulgation of the Buddhist beliefs and customs which influenced Sufism teachings in that area. In particular, the Khorasani narrative of Ibrahim Adham story shows how the people of Khorasan were impressed by the legend of Buddha and Buddhist beliefs. In this paper, the authors have attempted to demonstrate this influence through comparison and by giving examples. It is also attempted to show the similarities in elements such as homelessness, praying in caves and meat prohibition in Jataka literature and Buddhist customs and beliefs after reviewing the Shami and Khorasani versions of the narrative.

The comparative research about the common features and roots of the Shah-name, the most renowned Iranian national epic and the most comprehensive and authoritative source of heroic narratives, with other works of the same nature in verse and prose is a long story and cannot be adequately addressed in a limited scope. However, the present article aims at describing one or more common aspects. One of the fundamental structures of the epic works is the struggle motif. War in these works forms an axis around which an intertwined network of elements is gathered and, depending on the types of genres involved, the motif appears with varying degrees of frequency and extent. One of these inimitable aspects is depicting the scenes of struggles, battlefields and warriors. Sammak-e-Ayyar (585 A.H) is a long heroic epic tale in prose which is the first sample of numerous works of the same nature. Evidently, this work has close affinities with the Shah-name. To trace the influences of the Shah-name in Sammak-e-Ayyar, this paper has attempted to show a fourfold pattern within which the allusions of the latter work to the Shah-name can be studied. The study then proceeds to describe war-related elements in Sammak-e-Ayyar with reference to the samples from the Shah-name in four sections examining the human, conventional, objective and behavioral aspects. Despite the whole bulk of studies conducted in the field of epic poetry, up to now, the researchers haven’t suggested any patterns. Therefore, the present research has adopted and studied the struggle motif in the four abovementioned sections. The study aims to display how the epic heritage of the Shah-name is reflected in Sammak-e-Ayyar; a subject that will strike new grounds in the field of literary research. Although the influence can be detected in all epic works, Sammak-e-Ayyar is undoubtedly unique in this respect. Since Sammak-e-Ayyār has received less scholarly attention, our samples will be more taken from this work.

Plagiarism is an issue bothering poets and writers since old times. It has been prevalent among those who have not had the capability to create admirable and worthy works. It has been so widespread an offense that even great and well-known poets have sometimes committed it. The present study mainly focuses on the plagiarism of Abdol-Vase Jebeli, (sixth century A.H.), of the works of his famous contemporary poet Sanayee Qaznavi. It tries to investigate Jebeli's Direct Plagiarism (i.e. ascribing somebody's exact words to oneself without any addition or omission) and Modified Plagiarism (i.e. taking somebody's work and changing it) as the most evident types of plagiarism of Sanayee's Divan. Jebeli has repeatedly adapted Sanayee’s pieces in most literary styles especially in ghazal and qasidah forms.

The focus of this study is to analyze the text world of Omar Khayyam's poetry by a novel approach called cognitive poetics. To examine the author’s/reader's text world, the study has employed Freeman’s model (1998). She believes that conceptual mapping in literary texts can operate at three different levels including “attribute mapping,” “relational mapping,” and “system mapping.” Through reading Khayyam's text world according to the final level mapping, one can identify Khayyam's insight and map out the structure of his poems as well. The purpose of research is to show how cognitive poetics could make a distinction between everyday language and poetry as well as analyzing a poem. This paper is going to ask: 1) how system mapping as a main characteristic of poetry could help a poem's interpretation using the two other levels; 2) how three cognitive mapping can picture Khayyam's text world; and 3) how it is possible to draw clear-cut limitations for multiple interpretations and distinguish a fake poem from an original one by cognitive poetry methodology. Studying the text world according to this approach can suggest a method for textual analysis which literary theory cannot.

Although critics and novelists have not paid enough attention to the second person point of view, it has a lot of potentials for picturing the deepest parts of human mind. Most important types of this model are: 1. narratives in which the narrator, the protagonist and the addressee are the same; 2. narratives in which the narrator is separate from the protagonist/addressee. Reviewing the complete works of Hafiz proves the poet’s mastery in his poetic name lines; one of them being the artistic use of second person point of view. In almost 60 per cent of his poetic name lines, Hafiz has drawn upon this model. He uses both types of the second person pattern. The Main function of this model in Hafiz’s poetry is the expression of different concepts such as mysticism, eulogy, self-praise and irony by employing “tiny inner calls” that sometimes give orders or forbid the poet from doing something. The “calls” occasionally appear as those of a friend. The main innovation of Hafiz in this respect is using the second person technique to praise his own poetry.

The purpose of the study was examining the quality of the compulsory course of General Persian Literature in a selected number of undergraduate students at Ferdowsi University. To conduct it, a field study method was used. Findings showed that the undergraduate students believed that passing the course has not helped them achieve the set goals and meet their needs and interests. However, the results showed that the respondents evaluated teaching and classroom activities positively. Students were satisfied with the offered learning resources and expressed relative satisfaction with the evaluation method. In all research items, findings indicated that there was not a significant difference between male and female respondents. The results of the evaluation of the independent t-test for the mean scores of respondents who studied in non-humanities-dependent and humanities-dependent faculties showed that in all research items there was no meaningful difference in the items of aims, contents, teaching and classroom activities, learning resource and attitude. In contrast, there was a significant difference between students who studied in non-humanities-dependent and humanities-dependent faculties for all research items and the mean scores of the second group was higher than those of the first.