Journal of Literary Studies
Year:2011 | Volume:44 | Issue:2 (173)|Papers Count:7

This article aims at a comparative study of the structure of “Rostam and Esfandiar" legend, based on Hansen's theory, as narrated by Ibn Moqaffa’, in Nihayatu’l -irab and Ferdowsi, in Shah-name. Accordingly first the narratives analogous to those of Ibn Moqaffa’, and Ferdowsi have been compiled while probing into the basic dissimilarities between them, like Rostam's Zoroastrian faith or otherwise. Next, the structures of these stories have been analyzed at a general and specific level, according to Hansen. In conclusion, Ibn Moqaffa's narrative is found to be a historical one with a continual structure, whereas in the case of Shah-name, being an esthetically poetic narrative, it has been subdivided into a few episodes.

The stories of Ferdowsi’s, Shah-name, despite seeming independence, create, in a coherent form, an organic whole. This narrative complexity has caused scholars for a long time, to attempt to discover links that connect the stories. There have been three viewpoints regarding the analysis of mythical or historical features of Shah-name kings, and the interpretation of the longitudinal axis of its narratives: the triple division of Bertels and his followers, as Safa and Starikov; the historicist interpretation of critics such as Arthur Christensen, Mary Boyce, W. B. Henning and Khaleghi-e Motlagh, concerning the historical connections between stories; and the mythological interpretation of mythologists, such as Dumezil, Wikander, Mayrhofer, Sarkarati and Mokhtari, known to have based the solidarity of the longitudinal axis of the text on its systematic mythological deep-structure.This paper, after the examination and Critique of these theories, has attempted to give a new reading of raison d’être of the narrative solidarity of Shah-name, based on descriptive criticism, and finally, divide the longitudinal axis of the stories into three major paradigms:The First being "The Mythical History" or "The Symbolic History of The Race of Man, and of Iran" (from Kayumarth to Keikhosrow); the Second being: "The History of the rise of Religion" or "the Religious History" (from Lohrasp to Kayanid Bahman); and the Third: "the Narrative History" (from Achaemenid Bahman to the end).The aforementioned triple paradigm is a recurrent model, compatible with the cyclic nature of mythological continuity of time. Accordingly, it is possible to perceive the structural manifestations of these patterned models in Shah-name’s narrative structure.

The present article examines researches on Ferdowsi, through a descriptive-analytical method, concentrating on their quality as well as quantity, to describe, analyze, and classify those written after the Islamic Revolution of Iran. The outcomes of this study produce the result that all publications on Ferdowsi may be classified into three main, and fourteen sub groups. The three main categories of these researches are: applied, basic, and developmental. In the first group, authors analyze the conceptual issues in the Shāh-nāme, while the second group has paved the way for academic researches on Ferdowsi and Shahnāme, to provide a foundation for further researches on the issue. The third group consists of those that have improved and developed other researches on Ferdowsi and Shahnāme. The conclusion illustrates that most of the aforementioned studies have conducted an analytical approach.

Nushafarin name is an Iranian prose folk tale recounting the passionate love and courageous acts of “Prince Ibrahim”, the son of “Jahangir Shah”, a king of China, to attain the hand of his beloved, Nushafarin Gowhartaj, the daughter of Damascus king. There are stylistic features of folk tales and traditional romances to be perceived in this tale, as heroic deeds, and the presence of supernatural creatures, plants, places, objects of wonder, use of cyclic plots, cliché statements, ballads, folk songs, proverbs, ironies and hyperboles, to count just a few. A semi-literary language has been employed there, with a prose reminiscent of that of the Gajar period, lacking the old fashioned style of the Safavid era's writings. There are many instances of descriptive verbs and colloquial expressions, with conspicuous folk tale and chivalric legendary themes.This tale, along with the tale of “Shiroyeh Namdar” have functioned as models of story-telling for Naqib-ol-Mamalek in writing Amir Arsalan. The present paper, having introduced Nushafarin- name, explores elements of its influences on Amir Arsalan Namdar, while discussing and analyzing various features of the former.

The discourse or discourses of the society of Abolfazl-e Bayhaqi's epoch with the extensive verbal (speech and writing) and nonverbal (religious, convictional, social, political, cultural, and economic contexts and factors) potentialities, have left a great impact on thoughts, actions and words of the characters in Tārikh-e Bayhaqi. Although Bayhaqi is the narrator of the events, he himself is a character present in the discourse of Tārikh-e Bayhaqi, and as such, under the influence of the dominant discourse(s) of the period Attending to the words and thoughts of Bayhaqi concerning his attitude towards Ghaznavid's sovereignty, and the Sultan himself, reveals that there is a dichotomy in his discourse. This paper attempts to examine the opposition between truth and reality in Bayhaqi's discourse and its impact on his attitude towards the government and the king, in order to unveil Bayhaqi's role in the discourse of Tārikh-e Bayhaqi, pivoted around the aforementioned dichotomy in his discourse. In this study, the manner of Bayhaqi's deployment of "ideology" to legitimize the rulership of Ghaznavids, and the role of his conscious and unconscious mind in his attitude towards the king and his status will be analyzed. The results of this study show that the dichotomy in Bayhaqi's words emanate from the Interpellation and impressionability of the two opposed discourses.

In order to express his visionary experiences, Baha-e-valad has innovated his own symbols and imagery. Such illustrations of imagination may be interpreted as the product of his intuitive experiences of visits to the realm of Ideas referred to as a vision of one's Self in psychological, mystic terms. The present study, in an attempt to study and analyze the nature of the symbols in Baha-e-Valad's Maaref, and to shed light on the origins of his images, reveals that the clue to these images and symbols is the Companionship of God with him. It is through realizing such a Divine Companionship that he achieves the Divine Unification, while in a holistic view, extending such an experience to the whole universe, he attributes its resulting exaltations to all the elements in the universe. In fact, he interprets his taste of the Divine as a manifestation of the Companionship and Unification of the Unique Creator with the lay creature, evidenced on the basis of a theory of Perfection according to which all elements of the universe are assigned a divine duty.

The present research attempts to describe, examine and analyze the nature and quality, as well as the linguistic origins, of the verbs in the novel Missing Soluch.Since a, main concern in Dowlatabadi 's writing style has been the use of a rich, well-wrought language, he has taken great advantage of various Persian language treasures, such as: the standard language, Tehrani’s colloquial language, literary and archaic language, as well as some Persian dialects like Sabzevari.An instance of such an approach, may be best observed in one of his famous novels Missing Soluch, specifically in his innovating many various verbs, which are of great significance as their semantic, lexical, morphological and syntactic qualities attract the readers' attention so they may start wondering about their origins. No doubt some verbs in his work derive from dialectical Sabzevari, or standard Persian, yet a majority of them may be considered as those with linguistic universals in language varieties and dialects.