KOHAN-NAME-YE ADAB-E FARSI (CLASSICAL PERSIAN LITERATURE)
Year:2014 | Volume:5 | Issue:3|Papers Count:6

In this article, the story of Khosrow and Shirin is evaluated using assumptions of postcolonial studies and cultural semiotics. Shirin's presence in place of a female immigrant in Ctesiphon with its dual demand for allegiance with the host country's culture on the one hand and Shirin's emphasis on maintaining and codifying her home-country's culture on the other hand, stucks her in a challenging situation. In this paper, the mechanisms of center culture in the host country, for marginalizing Shirin, and the process of "othering" as her resistance strategy to maintain the cultural identity of "herself" in the host country is analyzed and the role of gender in the success of this process is shown.The results show that the host country's culture tries to marginalize Shirin as a dangerous «other» who seeks out to disrupt the established dominant culture order. Therefore her situation in the host country, sets the stage for the process of othering by her, as an act of resistance, considered as an anti-hegemonic act in order to stabilize her own cultural identity.Shirin's "othering" are divided in to two categories of "distanct others: and close others". Interestingly Shirin's "gender others" or "men" in the host country's land, are under the category of "close others" and "gender in-groups" or women are under the category of "distant others". Thus she takes two different approaches towards each.By such reading Khosrow and Shirin can be a reflection of the marginalized voices which manage to survive in the dominant center culture.

Archetypal literary criticism is a type of critical theory that interprets a text by focusing on recurring myths and archetypes in the narrative, symbols, images, and character types in literary work Archetypal criticism gets its impetus from psychologist Carl Jung, who postulated that humankind has a "collective unconscious," a kind of universal psyche, which is manifested in dreams and myths and which harbors themes and images that we all inherit. This heritage, these ancient and mythological forms, can be manifested in art and literature. In the tale of "King and Brahmans" in Kalila and Dimna, positive and negative anima archetypes and the wise old man are respectively: Irandokht, the other wife of king and Kaareydoun the sage. Archetypes of numbers, death, rebirth and mandala can also be found in this tale according to which other layers of meaning can be found in the text.

"From here to the Island of Unconsciousness" is an analytical text about five important stories from Masnavi Ma'navi's first volume. The interpretation of these five stories contains a common structure: "The King and the Maid", "Minister and the fanatic Christian-killer Jew King" "Lion and the Hunt", "the Parrot and The Merchant", "The Old harper and Omar". Interpretation, considering the signs existing in the text can act like a bridge that connects the land of form to the land of meaning. In fact, the meaning is not discovered in interpretation, it is reconstructed. Regarding the fact that Masnavi is an indeterminate open text, its stories have the capacity of being interpreted. The present paper, making use of the signs existing in the text, and interpreting the forms of stories, comes to a common targeted structure about human cognition. Also, using tables and analyzing them, we conclude that dynamic characters in these stories are symbols of mankind’s unique ego. In order to accomplish maturity and perfection, these characters go through the same path. They leave behind the stage of "half consciousness" and reach "consciousness". Unconscious is one of frequently used terms in Jung's psychology. In this research this term equals a current term in mysticism, the term "fanaa" that means perdition.

The diversity of themes that exists in Thousand and a Night stories cannot be seen anywhere else. One of these themes is Love. Since love is a theme whose trace can be found everywhere in this book, its analysis is inevitable. From Love Stories, we mean stories in which love is the main subject from the beginning to the end. In this research, the Thousand and a Night has been analyzed with regard to its theme, and then its love stories are identified. These stories are then criticized from a sociologiacal point of view, using Goldman's genetic structuralism. A taxonomy of these stories are delivered afterwards. This taxonomy is in fact the typology of "One Thousand and One Night" book. According to Goldmann, the work’s structures have strong associations with social structure. Therefore we should discover their underlying ideologies and their relation with larger ideologies of society and social mind. Therefore it is expected that once this research has come to a conclusion, we can at least identify the form and structure of its love stories, and tell the number of types that represent their social origins and designate the role of cultural and regional differences in the formation of these stories.

In this research we try to study and analyze the mystical capacities of Sa'di's Gulistan of 7th Century AH and search the hidden aspects and lower layers of the text, applying some tools of critical discourse analysis approach. Thus sociological and historical approaches are applied in order to come to a scientific interpretation of the text. Linguistic, social and historical aspects are of so much importance to us when we refer to Sa'di's time and society, to reveal hidden ideologies of the text. To this end, Michael Halliday's theories are used for analyzing the text and Norman Fairclough's for explaining the social aspects in Gulistan. Among suggested tools, ideational meta-function is applied concentrating on naming and processes. Also according to Fairclough, the text is studied in three levels of description, interpretation and explanation and so the joint between the text and society will be represented.Results show one main discourse named spiritual discourse. Expressing the role and function of participants in the above-mentioned discourse we finally found out that except God as the one participant in spiritual discourse, one can consider a special position for preceptor (Pyr) and mystic (Sahib-del) and recognize them as the most positive poles of Sufis discourse of Gulistan. Darvish is an individual with all kinds of abilities, not necessarily negative or positive.

One major sign that is important in understanding of mystic texts is the element "light". The designation of semantic significations and internal associations of the element light makes it easier to understand mystic texts. Semiotics, as a new approach in literary criticism, allows us to study these applications inside the discourse. The present paper is about to analyze the applications of the element "light" in one section of the story "Jafar's conquest to Take Hold of a Castle All Alone", using a descriptive-analytical approach. The major question is: how does the element "light" affect the discourse and how does it create the meaning. In fact the objective is to study the conditions that govern the creation of stories and the discourse, and to show the fluidity of meaning. In this story, the element "light" has a discursive function, and this way, a dynamic fluid discourse is created. The main hypothesis is that in this discourse "light" has embodied, cognitive, interfacial functions and these functions have affective, representative, explosive, simulative, reflexive and aesthetic characteristics. The analysis of functions and characteristics of "light" can designate the discursive capacities of the stories in Masnavi, and help us in studying this book.