JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF LETTERS AND HUMANITIES (KERMAN)
Year:2019 | Volume:21 | Issue:44 |Papers Count:12

The extensiveness and complexity of bureaucracy and court structures during the semi-autonomous governments of Samanid, Ghaznavi, and Seljuk in post-Islamic Iran has had a great influence on the evolution of the secretarial prose style; With the expansion of courts and bureaucracy, especially the bureau of correspondence, the importance and position of secretaries elevated; as a result of the increased prestige of secretaries, secretarial and correspondence prose also achieved a special position. It seems that with the expansion of courts, simple prose style has turned into an artificial and technical style due to such important causes as political, socio-cultural and psychological factors. Each of these factors has, in some way, been effective in the perfection of the prose of the scribes and secretaries. This study, in addition to introducing secretaries, deals with the evolution of secretarial prose style and its relationship with the development and expansion of the court.

“ Written narratives” are long folk stories that have been transformed from oral into written form through the history of narration and storytelling, maintaining some folk language features. Narration is an enduring tradition in Iran that has consistently provided resources for creating valuable literary works. The stories that have moved from oral literary realm into written literary realm have individual content and structure, and historical and cultural features and they have unique identity. This individual identity encourages one to consider this long story as a particular literary genre. Knowledge of literary genres prepares the ground for researchers to study literary works in a methodical framework. Formerly, some researchers included written narratives in some genres as romance, prose epics, heroic novels, and legends. In this study, the researcher tries to introduce the written narrative as a literary genre with individual features. Using three inter-textual variables of content, form/structure, aspect, and four extra-textual variables of function, context, addressee, and intertextuality, the written narrative in introduced as a literary genre with individual features.

“ Zad-e-Akherat” is one of the Persian works of Abu Hamed Mohammad Ghazali (died 505 A. H. ) and is the translation of his other book, Bedayat-al-Hedayat, to which some chapters on rhetoric are added. This work which is a selection of some parts of Kimiya-ye-Saadat was published in India, in 1268 and 1276 AH. By lithographic method. Morad Orang has published Zad-e-Akherat based on an undated manuscript (number 5552) which belongs to the library of the Parliament of Islamic Republic of Iran. This edition is not an authoritative one for two reasons: a non-scientific and incongruent editing method, and using an invalid manuscript. This study introduces this work and the Orang’ s edition with its obvious mistakes and deficits. It also notes that the re-editing of this work is necessary and inevitable due to the importance of Zad-e-Akherat and its author, Abu Hamed Ghazali, and the availability of a more ancient manuscripts of the work.

Accepting the view of Saussure (1857-1913) as to the two axes of succession and association, Roman Jacobson (1982-1896), the Russian linguist and theorist divides the language into two metaphorical and figurative poles, believing that the metaphorical pole is for poetry and based on the resemblance in the succession axis, the figurative pole is for prose and takes shape based on the proximity relation in the association axis. Based on this view, in “ Beihaghi History” , in which the dominance of language is with the figurative pole, among the different language functions, allusion is of particular importance as a stylistic property belonging to the figurative pole of the language. By interfering in the syntactic structure of the sentences, which is often in the association axis of the language, Beihaghi has made the greatest use of allusion for visualization and objectification of mental concepts. The allusions of Beihaghi‘ s History can divided into two linguistic and literary groups, most of which are objective in their original sense, and in the sense of what they mean, they are capable of realization in the external reality, and this has consistency with what Jacobson says as that the figurative pole of language is the prominent feature of the prose, especially the realistic literature.

The present study investigates the methods by which Rouzbehan was impressed by the Holy Quran’ s verses and hadiths, and tries to elaborate his interpretational approach in Mashrab Al-Arwah. In Mashrab Al-Arwah, also known as One Thousand and One Stages, along with elucidating the basics of wayfaring, Rouzbehan Baqli offers a coherent plan regarding theosophical and gnostic stages. Each of these stages has been constructed around and deals with Quranic interpretations. Deviation and non-conventionalism are seen in the proposition of the gnostic stages in this work in such a way that normal frameworks of wayfaring are deconstructed. Rouzbehan’ s method of enjoying Holy Quran’ s verses and hadiths is accompanied by many innovations and the present study deals with their investigation. The results of the study show that Rouzbehan’ s tendency to interpreting verses and hadiths based on a verbal and semantic deduction leads to a construction of new phrasal forms in Islamic Gnosticism. Moreover, negligence of the accompanying and situational context sets the ground for a sort of context variegation and offering of demonstrative interpretation of Holy Quran’ s verses. Another notable characteristic of Rouzbehan’ s interpretations is the verbal proportion and homophony in presenting gnostic stages that are predominantly found in the subconscious process of experiencing the language.

“ Qesas-ol Khaghani” (Stories of Khaghani) contains the brief history of the Safavids till the end of the reign of Shah Abbas II, and it deals specifically in detail about the conquest of Kandahar and the resistance after the victory over Shah Jahan Gurkani’ s army. This book also describes the biography of some scholars and scientists and includes many political commands and correspondences. This study tries to examine the book’ s written style through an explanatory-analytical method, and to stylistically evaluate it on linguistic, literary, and intellectual levels. At the linguistic level, the usage of prefix verbs, compound verbs, and past continuous tense, and at the literary level, the usage of frequent adjectives, genitive, and rhyme are mostly observed. At the intellectual level, there is specific attention to important historical events, the rules of the kings’ courts and the personal thoughts of Vali Gholi Beig regarding his tribute to Safavid Kings; through his talent and partiality to Shah Abbas, he tries to achieve glory and privilege.

Critical discourse analysis is a method for text analysis, and Norman Fairclough has presented the most comprehensive pattern in this field revealing the relation of the text to its context in three levels: description, interpretation and explanation. With the development of new methods in text analysis, the study of ancient texts seems necessary. Although mystical texts were more of internal motives than a struggle with politics and society, they were not immune to the influence of society and their time, and their dominant discourses are influenced by the conditions of their time. The fifth century is one of the important eras in Sufism and Resaleh Qushayriyeh written by Abu al-Qā sim al-Qushayri, to explain the principles and beliefs of Sufism after a deviation in Sufism, is one of the prominent texts of the time. Based on Fairclough's theory, this study analyzes the last chapter of this book which includes some orders to the disciples. The results of the study show that Qushayri's ideology is manifested in his method of employing words and phrases. The dominant discourses of this chapter include obeisance in Sufism, and surrender of the disciples to their Guide, which reflect the social, political and cultural conditions of the time and help the reproduction of new conditions and the improvement of the existing conditions.

The admirable book “ Nafsat-ol-Masdour” is one of the most important and authoritative books in the realm of literature and history. Despite the praiseworthy efforts of Professor Amir Hassan Yazdgerdi to correct and analyze this book, the extremely difficult and artistic text of the book has caused some of the content to remain obscure and some of the explanations seem not to be correct. This difficult text has always been discussed in various ways. In this study, the author has focused on some of these ambiguities and errors to uncover some of the difficulties and complexities of this seminal work. To this end, in the preface, a brief introduction of Nafsat-ol-Masdour is given, as well as the goals and background of the research. Then the discussed issues have been immediately addressed and an attempt is to analyze and explain them.

Satire and humor are forms of lyric literature that have always drawn attention from authors and poets of formal literature. As, in valuation of formal art, satire tries to follow serious objectives under the guise of laughter and mockery, and its horizons and territories extend to social affairs, its role is also considerable in the folklore and especially in folk legends. Satire in the legends, similar to other texts, is a form of criticism of life and is serious speech in the form of humor, which can criticize all political, economic, cultural and social arenas. Through a content analysis approach of qualitative and induction type, this study tries to analyze satire and humor techniques in the “ Encyclopedia of Iranian Legends” by Ali Ashraf Darvishiyan and Reza Khandan. Among the objectives of this study is to show satirical techniques in Iranian folk legends. Based on the research results, satirical techniques in folk legends include stupidity, obscurity, inconsistency and incompatibility of components and position, personification, humorous names, humorous titles, and other techniques. Among the various applications of satire in the folklore legends one can refer to entertainment, criticism, correction and promotion of ethical and educational values. Since, unlike official culture, the folklore culture contains lesser censorship and also, since releasing internal tensions is one of the applications of folklore satire, many of the mentioned techniques in folklore legends are presented through sexual and taboo issues.

Bostan-o-Siyahat, by Zeynalabedin Shirvani, is one of the most important works of the Qajar era. Despite its many values, this encyclopedic work is not known as it deserves. This study seeks to analyze this work based on a stylistic approach. Therefore, this work has been studied descriptively and analytically on three intellectual, linguistic and literary levels. The findings showed that the dominant intellectual themes in this work include philosophy and mysticism, history and geography, medicine, astronomy, music, religion, and various intellectual and religious, sociological, anthropological, and other issues. From a linguistic point of view, categories such as rhetorical compounds, Hindi words, rare and uncommon words, ellipsis, the use of old form of past progressive tense, etc. are frequently used, and the presence of a variety of puns, riming prose, imaginative metaphors, extended analogies, etc. are the main features of Bostan-o-Siyahat on the literary level.