JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF LETTERS AND HUMANITIES (KERMAN)
Year:2008 | Volume:NEW | Issue:23 (20)|Papers Count:19

Persian rhetorical books, following the same framework as that of Arabic ones, mainly include a critical preface dealing with the idea of word eloquence. This, in itself, puts forward the idea that a word's being void of some defects equals with its being eloquent; among which several major defects seems to be commonly discussed in all. That is, cacophony, eccentricity, and agrammaticality.However, what has been put forward in all these books, due to their dependence on Arabic rhetorical books, leads to shortage, or even lack of, optimal examples in Persian literature and this, consequently, bereaves these prefaces of being an optimal criterion for rhetorical exemplifications. Last but not least, one could observe more critical relevant topics which have commonly been ignored in all these books.

The old, rich and popular tradition of verbal story-telling, carried out by narrators, has been prevalent among all Indo-Europeans, especially, Aryan races inhabited the Iranian plateau, east of Iran and large khorasan. It had saved ancient myths , fictions and also historical events and had transmitted them to us. In this article, we will try to evaluate this tradition historically, and show that most of fictions, stories and mythological works in Islamic era have been formed under the influence of this verbal tradition.Many parts of Shahname, Samak-e-ayyar and Abumoslemname had been narrated by narrators and then written down. By a morphological comparison among Shahname, Samak-e-ayyar and Abumosslemname not only has proved this fact but also revealed that Samak-e-ayyar is an epic, not a fiction and Abumosslemname is a national epic, not historical one.Finally we have showed that, after Shahname, this tradition and its works have been transmitted, first by motivations other than patriotism such as amusement and earning money, secondly fallen into decline of content and vulgarity (popularity). As a result, its path was separated from formal literature, and its addressees altered, and some non-epical motives entered into this tradition

Colors are among the most dominant visual elements that have had a crucial role in the representation of man´s beliefs and imaginations. Throughout the history, with the use of colors, many artists have been able to convey their inner desires and feelings. Ferdosi Toosi, the famous Iranian poet, has very skillfully and artistically used colors in Shahname. The element of color has been mentioned in Shahname for 4197 times, 32.73% includes black and white, and 67.27% of it being other colors. Red, used 468 times, stands in the third place after black and white. It mostly symbolizes­ life and death and has correspondence with other nations’mythical beliefs. Yellow has been used for 313 times. The epical kings of Shahname are surrounded with a golden light, and they have golden crowns and palaces. The most dominant relation between this color in Shahname and the myths of other nations is the role it has in the clothes of a bride and the shroud of the dead. Purple and Green with their symbolic functions, are among the most used colors in Shahname. Ferdosi’s poetic approach toward these colors has been studied and analyzed in this article.

This article is an attempt to study the image of women in the works of two Persian poets of sixth century, Khaqani (595 D.H.) & Nizami (599 D.H.) from a feministic critical approach. In this approach the critic tries to study the works that have been affected by patriarchy (almost dominant in all societies), whose writers (mostly men) consciously or unconsciously insist on and present the patriarchy system. The purpose of this article is to show that it is not only the effect of society that leads to patriarchic point of view in writers but also their personalities and the effect of their family and traditional believes are so important. In this research Nizami`s Mathnavi like Khosro and Shirin, Leili and Majnoun, and Haft Peikar and also Khaqani`s odes & lyric poems will be reviewed. These two poets lived in the same era and were close friends. Nizami was an intellectual who had a high respect for and belief in women. In his stories he creates some female characters that no one else in Persian literature could bring into being, not before and not after him. He never debases women and there is no sign of patriarchy in his works. In his stories men and women are equal to each other and even sometimes women have a higher position. In Khaqani’s poetry women have no position, as he strongly followed the traditional believes, and believed that intellect and religion of women are imperfect. According to the old imagery in Persian poetry he likened the world to a tricky woman and like the poets before him, he believed that intellect is male and soul is female, so he likened the appetitive soul to a woman. Generally the word “Zan” (woman) in Khaqani’s way of thinking has a negative connotation and whenever he uses this word he wants to reproach. While the word “Banoo” (lady) is positive for him, when he wants to praise the women in court, he uses this word. Also mother is highly respected by him and in some lines of his poetry he praises his own mother.

Abu-l-Faraj-e-Runi is one of the poets of the 5th century A.H who had a gift of religious and scientific knowledge and predisposed Persian poetry to be scientifically enriched. What he accomplished was to bring about a gradual change in the style of Persian poetry, from Khorasani style to Iraqi style.This own poems partly regard religious issues. Being a eulogizer of politicians, he was so wise to their interests. Therefore, he made the best of the Quranic verses to praise his subjects into divine figures and exaggeratingly equate them with apostles, those who can ascend to the heaven and justifiably wage holy wars to expand their sovereignty and, in effect, Islam! Unlike his contemporaries who wished the eulogized would live as long as natural elements, Abu-l-Faraj wished them immortality like that of Islam. This article focuses on Abu-l- Faroj’s cherishing of religious elements in five categories: religious references, religious means and resources of the eulogized, the eulogized viewed as holy combatants, their immortality, and divine man.

Persian noun phrase (NP) has been analyzed within different theoretical frameworks. According to all analyses, each NP is composed of an obligatory head and one of more optional dependents.Although the nature of dependents is clear, the identity and position of some is obscure and remains to be investigated. This piece of research aims at presenting a comprehensive structural analysis of Persian NP based on X-Bar syntax. According to this theory, structural elements of an NP appears on three levels and are shown by labels such as X", X' and X respectively. Within this framework, any NP accompanying with the first pre-head dependent appears on the highest level and is shown by (N ″ ).NPs lacking the first pre-head dependent appear on the second level and are shown by (N' ). The head of the NP appears on the lowest level and is shown by (N). Analyzing nature and position of each dependent of the NP is of prime importance in this research.

The question of getting to knowledge has been a major concern in empirical, philosophical, mystical and artistic studies so far. It seems that in Islamic civilization the mystic orientation which is the result of intuitive knowledge of the metaphysical world is in accordance with the art that stems from the same intuitive knowledge. This auspicious circular connection in Islamic culture causes artistic creations with a divine nature, and also has decorated sublime mystical thoughts by artistic beauty.This article is an attempt to depict the aspects of this subject.

Zamakhshari, a scientist of Iranian race, lived in the second half of fifth century and the first half of sixth century (467-538, A.H). He was very skillful in Arabic and Islamic sciences and wrote valuable works on various fields of them, including a dictionary entitled "Asas Al Balaqeh" which was an achievement in the evolution of Arabic Lexicography in the author’s s time. In this article, the goal and intention of Zamakhshari for writing this book, the comparison of this book with previous Arabic Dictionaries and the viewpoints of its critics are studied.

Epic poetry and prose makes an outstanding part of Persian literature. The essence of these literary works reflects heroic battles between two opposite groups: just and unjust or protagonists and antagonists. The creators of the works usually tried to mirror their own culture and civilization in the behaviors of the heroes in addition to their ancestors enlightening ethics introduced by the use of specific terms, war equipment and battle field customs. These are cultural heritages which need to be understood more through a delicate study of epic works generated by Ferdowsi and other great epic poets. To this end, the present paper makes an attempt to focus exclusively on one type of equipment named in Shahnameh: musical instruments and their sounds. They have been classified in terms of their frequency of use. Then their features have been investigated.

Substitution of adjectives for nouns is the statement given by traditional grammar to explain such an idiosyncratic use of adjectives. This paper aims to study the constituent structure of this usage. The claim is that the basis of this structure is a syntactic phrase, which after some (postlexical) processes, the adjective find itself in the distributional context of the noun omitted; therefore, adjective can be considered as the relic of that syntactic phrase.It is shown that the process involved is very generative in contemporary spoken Persian and it is not confined to adjectives but to any phrases acted as adjectives to nouns. Hence the traditional statement saying “class shift due to changing the syntactic slot” is denied.

This research is aimed at drawing a general sketch of the female characters in the Mathnawi, a task which at first seems impossible due to the variety of the characters in the book. The stories of the book have been closely analyzed in terms of three important factors of the narration: the process of the story, the acts of the characters, and their dialogues. Then the characteristics of the female characters have been extracted and classified. The study shows that the following characteristics, with little variation, appear in most of the female characters: fear, deceit, corruption, beauty and superficial observation.

Simile means resembling and is equal to“Allegory” in the word. It can be said that simile is an image that is created by resembling of various things with each other by the help of imaginary. One kind of simile according to similarity is sometimes “Allegory simile” and compound is being considered as one as thing. Simile can be called Allegory somewhere and compound in other places like Ayeh 17 from Baghareh which is modified by Zamakhshari. One of fine points in simile is “Simile based on Metaphor” which Ayeh 19 from Baghare is its example. Likened in this Allegory Simile is not mentioned. Like this style in textual structure of simile is Ayeh 18 from Baghareh which likened is not in the word but that really there is in the Ayeh.

This paper is aimed to investigate Saeb e Tabrizi’s poetry in terms of meaning, images, imagination and language and discover their close associations. It is believed that language and imagination, among other poetical factors, are of great value for Saeb. His poetry depicts the amalgamation of emotion and perception, something, which is traceable in Sadrolmotaallehin’s school of philosophical thought. In his allegories, Saeb portrays nature and the surrounding world and is mostly retrospective but the themes of his poems are introspective. In effect, the excessive use of allegory and symbol is an attempt to create mental concepts in the minds of the readers. To do so, he is obliged to resort to some tangible and concrete elements from nature. And that is why nature plays a salient role in his poetry.

Turkish proverbs in Ardabil province which apply for and advising orthodoxy of people, is the result of experiences, knowledge, social and cultural thought of people of these areas and neighboring. Also among them Islam cultural effects on neighboring nations and countries is seen. In grammatical structure of proverbs, is used the kind of Turkish verbs, models and various tenses (past, present, and future). Proverb is often used metaphorically (real and recognizable, unreal and unrecognizable). Also some of them are made in the form of simple statements (long and short) and sometimes they mixed and used with antithetical and reciprocal affairs. Poetical and rhythmical proverbs also are accounted as the most delighted and beautiful part of wisely and thoughtful speech of these areas. These proverbs often mixed with verbal and have excited music and tune that sometimes are poetical. Different factors and phenomena are common in grammatical structure of Turkish proverbs, likes nature and its factors (water, rain, mountain, sea, …) human being and animal, bird, cities and regional plant and even special countries as far and near) and also various social groups and classes (poor, rich, scald-headed-mad-bride, etc.) are the factors and axes that form the subject structure of Turkish proverbs. The other group of proverbs has a myth and parable structure. Along them we face with wisely speeches that taken their meaning-bearing of ideas and vulgar superstitions. The last important point in our research is the reconstruction of proverb that have training and psychological aspect. Studying of these groups introduce us with social & individual morals and creations of its speakers.

If we apply the name of novel to some of the first imperfect Persian attempts in this field, we can stand that Persian novel is now about one hundred years old. This literary genre that Iranian writers first acquired during the social, Political and cultural changes initiated by the Constitutional Revolution (Mashrute) as the result of the translations of the European historical novels, has till now been explored from different points of view, still, social criticism approach towards the novel hasn’t so far been much of the scholars interest. Critical review of the relationship between the Iranian society and Persian novel, or in the other words, influence of the society in the contents of the novel and the impression of the novel in the society, relationship between critical approaches and technical value of the Persian novel, question of the social and moral engagement of the writers and the way of presentation of the country’s social, political and economic changes in the contemporary novel, these are the problems of present article. In this research the process of forming, development and, sometimes, perfection of the Persian novel has been divided into four distinct periods of time to obtain the possibility of comparison and evaluation of the relationship between the novel and the society with regard to social changes in the historical period.