JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF LETTERS AND HUMANITIES (KERMAN)
Year:2007 | Volume:NEW | Issue:20 (17)|Papers Count:14

Garshasp is a hero whose soul has been cast away from Ahura’s court and also himself from the national epic- Shahnameh. His soul is driven from heaven for he has hurt “Fire”- the son of Ahuramazda and Amshaspand Ordibehesht; for he is a servant of Aniranian Zahak, he is not well-known in Shahnameh. Whenever the help of Ahuramazda and Iranian’s love is not with a hero, he is not in the subconscious of this land’s people.He is shot in a battle and devilish-dreams-Div, haunts him and he falls into the unconscious sleep for thousands years, till he is awakened by Ahura’s light; in order to win back Iranian’s love and moving back to Ahura, he kills Zahak and by means of Zoroaster’s mediation his Fire-hurting sin is forgiven-due to his good deeds and at last his soul is allowed to enter into the magnificent Paradise.

The audience of the modern theater is relatively passive, compared with the audience in the past. Throughout the performance, the audience sits motionless in the dark auditorium watching a performance in which he has no role. Historically this passivity is new, because in the theatre of Ancient Greece, the middle Ages and Renaissance the audience had a much more important role. In ancient Greece the dividing lines between the audience and actor were not clear. The spectator was actually a participant in the action as in Athens in the 5th century BC all aspects of life had a forensic nature. In the middle Ages there was a close relation between the audience and the actors- ordinary men- after the church lost control over the production of plays. And the audience of Renaissance theatre who was physically close to the actor showed extremities of emotion. But as time went on audience participation was limited to clapping. As the social distance between the audience and the actor increased, the gap between them widened. This was manifested in the separation between the auditorium and the stage. Neither Realistic theatre which attempted to create a real world on the stage, nor the epic theater which tried to distance the audience from the action could eliminate the ever-widening gap between the audience and the actor. The emergence of the theater of the absurd was a final blow to the relation between the audience and the actor. The audience could not identify with an iconographic figure inhabiting a meaningless world and speaking a distorted language. Anti-theatrical tendencies in contemporary theater jar the audience out of the action and make the theater lose its ritualistic effect. Hence the failure of different audience-involving techniques.

Expansion of Modernism and the commencement of the Third Wave (Post-industrial Era) as a 20th century phenomenon, affected all aspects of life, including art and literature. This wave brought about a new type of story known as minimalist trying to cope with the pace of life through excessive conciseness.It is considered a modern phenomenon in the western literature, yet one can find many examples in Persian classic literature to compare.The author tries to depict this comparison in the tales of Saadi’s Golestan. It is concluded that the analysis can pave the way to a new understanding of the structure of Persian classic tales and stories.

This article discusses how the first Islamic government was formed and how Muslim Arabs copied the public office patterns of Iran as a model. For the first time in the reign of Omar and then after conquering Iran, when Arabs became familiar whit Iranian governmental organizations and tax system and observed their advantages, with the help of the expert Iranians, established the governmental offices in Islamic region. And then they hired experienced Iranian clerks to work in these offices. Up to about 82 A.H all the documents in Islamic government were written in Farsi, but in this year (65 -86 A.H), Abdolmalek - ibn - e – Marvan ordered to translate them into Arabic. Though in the first years of Islamic reign, there was just one office to deal with all financial and legal affairs and to send letters etc. with the beginning of the reign of Omavids and then Abbasids, the offices were increased in number and divided into different branches. The five major offices during the reign of Abbasids were: The ruling and seal, post, ministry, judgment and tax. The article deals with these five offices and how they were copied after the Iranian model.

This article deals with passive process in Persian language with a new approach. To the contrary of traditional approaches, which divide verbs into two main absolute types – transitive and intransitive- this article shows that verbs have such complex semantic features that assuming them as two or more absolute types is impossible. Reviewing the commonly mentioned reasons for passivization, the author claims that the main reason for passivization in Persian is defocusing from the agent. And as the agent has different representations in various verbs, passive structures, also, have different properties. Actually, this article supports the ‘prototype theory’ and provides a speculative continuum for passive process in Persian.

Alinameh is a fifth century Persian epic poem about virtues and battles of Imam Ali(AS) composed by a poet named “ rabi”. Containing 2000 lines of verse, it is regarded the first epic poem of Twelver Shi’is and  is very important in view of both antiquity of Shii epic history and also uniqueness in containing old Persian words and combinations unknown up to the present in Persian literary history. Alinameh gains high value in regards to epic expression, particularly in terms of epic description and portraying via related devices. Because these devices make various scenes in epic poetry more tangible and perceptible, they are regarded as a criterion for measuring the epic work qualitatively.  In epic poem, descriptions and images are shown using special devices such as simile, metaphor, allegory, metonymy, and hyperbole (usually in epic poem, hyperbole is based on simile and figurative attribution).  Study of the role of each one of these devices in epic poem has made critics and analysts of literary works busy from the ancient times.The authors aim to study the role and position of each image in conveying the message and the extent of their appropriateness in epic poem while citing poetical examples. This study indicates that the composer of this work became familiar with the language and expression skills of epic poetry and also its details through studying and observing Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh and could create a valuable work.

Narrating mythical stories was perhaps the earliest method man used to understand and express the truth about life and the world. The story of Ardaviraf's trip to heaven and hell in Avesta and Saint Augustin's autobiography written in the fourth century AD are narrations that made use of the preferred principles of their time, organizing the story of their "text" in a way that can still be read again and again. Today narration means a precise attempt to compile these disseminated and disharmonious elements into a meaningful whole. Each and every event holds an appropriate position when in a narrative form. The concept of narration and narrative functions have been taken into account by many scholars particularly over the recent decades in various intellectual fields including cinema and drama, philosophy, mythology, the theory of history, the theory of literature and etc. After all understanding people’s lives is only possible through reading the narrations that picture the possible and potential aspects of life.

This article is largely devoted to introduce unknown and unprinted poems of Jarullah Zemakhshari- the great man of letters, exegetist, traditionist, philologist and poet of the 5th century A.H. These unknown poems have been written on various subjects and matters and writers have extracted them from a unique manuscript under the title of Badayeol Molh (new interesting recitals), which is the literary work of Qasim ibn Hussein ibn Ahmad Kharazmi known as Sadrul Afazel – Heart of the Knowledgeable -(deceased in 618 A.H). This manuscript is available in the department of manuscripts of the University of Tehran.

In encountering with new words and names, Ferdowsi has tried to give definitions and origins of the meaning. Sometimes, in his great book the etymology of the words is presented based on physical word-form and taking advantage of literary devices. By this, it is meant that Ferdowsi has felt free to make literary innovations and artistic inventions in some words, names and constructions by using lexical and semantic devices such as asteismus, etiologia, derivation and quasi-derivation.Furthermore, he has occasionally described semantic aspects of names and terms and has clearly explained their true concepts regardless of etymology, which shows his thorough knowledge of language, philology and main references.The article tries to show Ferdowsi's artistic handling of etymology and semantics on a descriptive basis.

From Nizami and Khaghani times on, there has been much discussion about new style (Genre) and concepts of this sort in the history of Persian poetry every poet tried to name himself and his verse modern. Among all these claims, the inclination to be new and the attraction of being modern before the audience, is more outstanding. Of course, the inclination to be new stopped upon formation of the triple societies of literary-style return. But poets again, revealed their enthusiasm of being new.One of the pioneers is poet laureate Mohammad Taghi Bahar who lived during Mohammad Ali Shah, Ahmad Shah, Reza Shah and Mohammad Reza Shah reigns. He was a gifted poet with a strong memory.  His strong tendency to social and political affairs neared his verse to the essence of contemporaneousness.Bahar claims that his style of verse is new. In one of his compositions, he claims that modern Persian poetry is after his efforts and studies.

Over the past centuries, great works of the Renaissance including Hamlet, Doctor Faustus, Don Quixote and Paradise Lost have exited different and at times, conflicting interpretations. However, the link between these works and the Philosophic thought of the classical times has not received much attention. This essay is an attempt to show that these works above all reflect an old paradox found primarily in Plato.