PERSIAN LITERATURE (FACULTY OF LETTERS AND HUMANITIES)
Year:2020 | Volume:10 | Issue:1 (25)|Papers Count:12

Banu Goshasp Name is a heroic poem including more than a thousand verses about the bravery of Banu Ghashsp, Rostam’ s daughter. At present, there is no information about the writer of this poem, but researchers have debated and speculated about the time of its composition. Some scholars have attributed Banu Goshasp Name to the 5th century, but some others have attributed it to the sixth century because it is not mentioned in the book Mojmal al-Tavarikh, which mentions some old heroic texts. They have also provided reasons to prove their hypothesis. However, one of the most recent studies has attributed the composition of Banu Goshasp Name to the seventh and eighth centuries. Another controversial point about Banu Goshasp Name is that this poem, which has no beginning and no end, actually belongs to a larger poem named Faramarzname-ye-Kuchak. In this article, with regard to the reasons such as the existence of verses from other heroic poems in Banu Goshasp Name, the connection of the final verses of Tahminehname with the beginning of Banu Goshasp Name, as well as a number of popular thematic stories that can be seen in narrative scrolls, we illustrate that Banu Goshasp Name was composed later than the time that has been imagined so far. Then, by examining and matching its narrative themes with folklore texts, we argue that the source of the narrations of Banu Goshasp Name is oral and folk narrations, and contrary to the popular belief, it is of no antiquity and originality.

Mirsad al-Ebad is one of the dominant mystical works of the seventh century AH. Mohammad-Amin Riahi, a contemporary researcher, has corrected this text. Riahi has set the Bursa manuscript as a basis for his correction and has used other manuscripts for comparative correction in some parts. Although it is a scholarly correction, it is not methodical and the corrector does not have a fixed method and criteria in correcting the text. Considering that rhetorical, linguistic, and literary elements of a text are the fundamental and recurrent features of stylistics, paying attention to them can result in a scientific and methodical correction. One of the aspects of Mirsad that has been neglected in Riahi’ s correction is its artistic aspect (musicality and saj’ ), which is the dominant aspect of Mirsad. Another technique for creating musicality is changing sentence structure, and Riahi has not paid attention to this aspect either. Another dominant aspect that has been neglected is the linguistic attributes. Carelessness to this aspect has caused some mistakes in correction. In addition, some words have been chosen carelessly from manuscripts and are false. The reason for most mistakes is relying too much on Bursa manuscript. This article endeavors to correct of mistakes relying on dominant aspects of Mirsad.

The poetry of the fourth and fifth centuries AH is a mirror of nature in comparison with the poetry of other periods. The poet of this period speaks more of the elements that his audience, the king and the courtiers, see and know. Among these elements are the textiles whose names may have changed today; “ kordovâ ni” is one of them. It is a thick textile that was used in wine filtration, wound dressing, and making tents, as well as in war clothing. This textile had different types some of which were precious and some were not of much value. “ Kordovâ ni” does not appear in Persian dictionaries or in Persian poetry; it is mentioned only in the poetry of Qatran Tabrizi, the famous poet of the fifth century. This article is an attempt to determine the meaning of the word “ kordovâ ni, ” its origin, and its uses, based on Qatran’ s poetry and with the help of Arabic and Persian sources, and to show that this textile is attributed to an area of Azerbaijan, where it was woven, and that it has long been associated with the Arabic-speaking community. Qatran who was familiar with the Arabic language and texts probably saw the word in Arabic texts.

Aadab al-Harb wal-Shaja’ a written by Fakhr-e-Modabber is one of the most well-known texts of the first half of the seventh century. This book is an excellent text among Persian texts in several respects. Among pre-Mongol scripts, it is a rare text regarding its subject matter (militarism and the definition and description of the means of warfare). Many names for the weapons of war, the methods of deployment and formation of the army, and the methods of confronting the enemy are given in this book. The variety of lingual and literary advantages of the book, especially its military terms and specific words, made it spectacular in terms of its subject matter. Thus, today, Aadab al-Harb wal-Shaja’ a is a useful and unique reference book for researchers for writing encyclopedias and studying rituals and etiquettes of war. Aadab al-Harb wal-Shaja’ a was published in 1967 by Ahmad Soheili Khansari, and since then, there has been no mention of it in research works. Many shortcomings in the text caused by major problems such as inappropriate selection of the correction method, errors and omissions, and defects in the copies, and the unacknowledged values of the text due to the brevity of the introduction, the commentary, and the index necessitates a new correction. In the present article, using accessible manuscripts, the printed text is investigated, and with examples of various errors in the book, the necessity of a correction is demonstrated.

Khatm al-Qarayeb, or Tohfat al-Eraqain, is a renowned masnavi by Khaqani. It has long been attracting the attention of scholars. For years, the question among researches has been whether this work is a travelogue or not. These researchers, however, are of different opinions and so far, in the numerous corrections of this text and other research, no fixed answer has been given to this question. This article tries to give an accurate and clear answer to this ambiguity through a library method based on Khaqani’ s works. In this regard, an attempt is made to examine and critique the major and diverse views of researchers on this subject, and then to present a new perspective, that is some parts of this work is definitely a travelogue, and other parts of it are not. To do so an accurate knowledge of the number and time of Khaqani’ s travels is needed; thus, this topic is also addressed. In this regard, first, common views are studied and criticized, and then it is argued that, contrary to popular belief, Khaqani has performed at least three Hajj during his lifetime.

What is poetry? It is the main question that has been raised in philosophy, literature, and linguistics, and a group of experts have answered it. The present article seeks to answer this question through Heidegger’ s phenomenology, and thus, identify the field and subject of literary science. Studies have shown that what Heidegger called as the “ house of existence” is the language that reaches the human ear from existence, and this is the consciousness and cognition of man. What human beings express from the understandings and openness of existence creates “ speech” and human language. Poetry is the impression and expression of new understandings that have not been expressed in a human speech before; it is the words that reveal the universe differently and bring a new comprehension to human beings. If poetry is repeated and used in everyday speech, personal understanding becomes public. Human speech always oscillates in a range of historicity and newness, creativity and banality, poetry and everyday speech. Comprehensions are shared in human speech, and poetry is an opportunity to share new insights. Poetry makes the language comprehensible, and expands understanding and general language. It is essential for the literature to pay more attention to the creative and linguistic aspect of poetry and value creative speeches and new discourses that leave the literary traditions to develop and expand the language.

Due to their written characteristics, mystic biographies are subject to the restrictions of recorded discourse. However, conversational features like turn-taking, participant’ s tone and turn sequences, which are inserted in biographical dialogues, reproduce some spoken language rituals. These dialogues contain some implicit information that can be described and interpreted through a systematic approach to conversation. Tazkirat al-Awliya is the most remarkable mystic biography whose dialogues are organized by following several procedures of spoken language. However, its conversational potentials have not been examined through Conversation Analysis. Therefore, in the following paper, by applying Hymes’ conversational analysis model — known as SPEAKING model — we distinguish and analyze its most frequent speech events in descriptive and interpretive levels. The results indicate that despite the previous findings about dialogue in Tazkirat al-Awliya, which were limited to analyzing dialogue content, the conversational features are produced and formulated in such a way that they can reinforce the intended meaning the author/narrator was trying to convey. This phenomenon can be perceived by studying the author/narrator’ s attempts in creating contextualized dialogues with classified and purposeful participants whose tones, conversational sequences, and turn-taking dynamics are profoundly articulated. Such features not only reveal the hierarchal structures of episteme among different groups of mystics, but also cross-examine their loyalty to this hierarchal system.

In the field of contemporary storytelling, recognizing the literary type of a work and its characteristics depends on assessing the constructive components of that story. One of the most important and influential of these components is the mood. Proper use of the mood is very important, especially in epic works. This is because the epic poet can convey the dominant atmosphere of the work to the reader. This study examines and identifies influential factors in mood and the creation of epic content in the story of “ Haft Khan Esfandiyar” from Ferdowsi’ s Shahnameh. Considering Ferdowsi’ s masterfulness in composing the national epic of Iran, analyzing the stories of Shahnameh is necessary in understanding the features of this literary genre. In “ Haft Khan Esfandiyar, ” Ferdowsi has created a mood and content appropriate to the nature of epic by using the element of “ defamiliarization” in the form of celestial forces, natural elements, and magical affairs. Moreover, the heroism of Esfandiyar in passing through “ Haft Khan, ” with the help of hyperbole, which is an inseparable part of epic, has highlighted the epic mood of the story. In this story, exaggeration sometimes directly and sometimes in the form of similes, metaphors, irony or in the context, effect the epic mood of the story, and the proper use of these devices by Ferdowsi, together with defamiliarization, plays a significant role in creating the epic content of “ Haft Khan Esfandiyar. ”

Romanticism is one of the philosophical literary schools. It is the mother of many European schools and brought about some intellectual changes in Europe. Although Romanticism was introduced in Germany in the nineteenth century as a distinct school, some of its roots had long existed in Iranian culture and thought and had influenced the intellectual and cultural life of Iranian people. This is reflected in most of the Iranian literary and artistic works from the past to the present which shows that romanticism is part of the cultural and literary history of this land. Shahram Rahimian is a third-generation Iranian writer whose novel Dr. Noon Loves His Wife More than Mosaddegh incorporates the components romanticism in its intellectual and structural foundations. Therefore, in this research, we try to study the principles of the school of romanticism as reflected in this novel through a descriptive-analytical methodology. The research findings show that the aforementioned novel has the parts of its narration formed based on the difference between imagination and fantasy. It also displays the features of romantic literature such as feminine defamiliarization, mythical thinking, tendency towards music, smoking opium, return to the nature and childish innocence, and the contradiction between personal life and social responsibility.

After the spread of Nimayi poetry, major changes took place in sonnet forms, and innovations were fostered in accordance with the age of modernity in language, expression, form, and content, so that little by little “ new sonnet” was formed. The poets of this movement made significant changes in these areas in sonnet. One of the modernist lyricists is Manouchehr Neyestani, who, considering the time of presenting his sonnet, should be regarded as one of the founders of modernization in the form of Persian sonnet. The purpose of this study is to explain the way he moved towards the modernization of Persian sonnet. The research findings show that he fostered significant innovations in the external form of the sonnet, including changes in typology, punctuation, number of verses, repetition of verses, meter, and rhyme. Nevertheless, his efforts to innovate in the content of sonnet have been analyzed too, and for this purpose, we have studied the narrative, imagery, and paradoxes in his sonnets. Most of these innovations first appeared Neyastani’ s sonnets and from there they found their way to the “ new sonnet. ”

Serenade is a common motif and archetype in literature. It is a kind of dialogue between the lover and the beloved while the beloved is by the window of her house and the lover is below the window. In this essay, serenade is not limited to the door and the window of the beloved; all the top positions like the roof, horse, sky and the sun could be included into the meaning of the upper place of the beloved. We can see this motif in the traditional literature more often than in contemporary one, because serenade belongs to the paradigmatic axis of love in the classical poems where the lover is always away from the beloved. But in contemporary love literature, the lover is often in the presence of his beloved; so love nowadays acts more often on the syntagmatic axis. In this essay, serenade is also considered as a political concept when all the powerful men like to be in a position superior to the others. So in the power-centered literature of Nietzsche, Zoroaster descends the mountain to save the others, and in the disciplinary power of Foucault, the self-discipline on the citizens is materialized through the high towers which replaced the dungeons.

Imagery in Iranian poetry and in painting are closely related in terms of artistic creation and aesthetics as well as insight. This close connection is effected through the influence of painting on various themes of Persian poetry and literature. According to the findings of this study, at some point in the Safavid era, merchants and the middle class started to prosper; as a result, and due to the great influence of scholars, art matured among the middle layers of society. In addition, the fading of collective values, the growth of pride among poets and artists, and the use of enigmatic meanings caused the paintings to be painted from unusual angles and the tone of speakers and artists to change. Since each era has its own tone, we see the echo of this tone in the poetry and painting of this era to the extent that many of the literary devices of this era became lexical games and the emphasis on figures of speech surpassed imagery in the poetry of Ahli Shirazi and other poets of the Safavid era. Based on the hypothesis of this research, for many instances of wordplay, visual examples can be found. Thus, the main purpose of this research is to find out whether the painters of Isfahan school have employed in their paintings the literary devices of the poetry of this period.