JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF LETTERS AND HUMANITIES (KERMAN)
Year:2005 | Volume:NEW | Issue:17 (14)|Papers Count:11

Preoccupied with Khayyam"s controversial ideas, researchers have done little work on structural and aesthetic dimensions of his quatrains. This article focuses on Khayyam"s use of symmetries as one of the main attributes of more than %90 of his quatrains. The authors first identify three major symmetries -- antonymous, equivalent and synonymous symmetries -- and then argue that these stylistic devices may be taken as yardsticks to distinguish Khayyam among other poets.

This article is based on a research which pursued a three fold aim: 1) to find out if the cognitive style of impulsivity/reflectivity (I/R) has different effects on Iranian EFL learners; 2) to discover the relationship between gender differences among adult language learners; and 3) to see if there is any interaction between gender differences and I/R. To obtain such a goal, the Yando and Kagan"s (1968) MFFT test was used to divide the participants into two groups of impulsives/reflectives based on their response latency and number of errors in answering the items of the personality test. Then, the final English exam in the pre-university center was given to the students. Results revealed no statistically significant relationship among the variables of the study.

Besides recognized methods, one of the ways to classify similes is identifying them according to artistic exaggerations poets employ. Depending on the artist"s talent and his/her artistic imagination, one may conceive an unlimited table for this quality. The artist may pursue various objectives by these rhetorical devices, including, among others, overcoming dejection, shedding behind clichés and de-trivializing of an existing simile to give it fresh life, all of which open new windows to poetry and its relevant imagery. With a view to recent theoretical principles, this article explores Saadi"s use of similes in his sonnets and odes to exemplify as well as analyze his artistic exaggerations. By so doing, the authors establish the fact that Saadi achieved a personal style by deviating from the established norms of expression common among his predecessors.

This paper investigates and analyses the effect of Nahj-Al Balaagha on the verse of Persian poets since the fourth to the end of the eighth centuries(A.H.). Evidences indicate that the rich literary quality of Nahj-Al Balaagha had inspired poets such as Ferdowsi, Sanaee, Nizami, Naser-e-khosrow, Asadi Toosi, to name but a few. This analysis indicates that old Persian poets, depending on the social context and the conditions of the time, selected issues in Nahj-Al Balaagha as subject matter for their verses but while poets exploited the content of Imam Ali"s text, they avoided Arabic diction.

Grammatical gender is basically a linguistic issue but how it is presented in language nowadays has turned out to be a cultural, social and even political problem. Old Persian had the original genders of masculine, feminine and neuter. In Middle Persian, all genders had disappeared. Now it is said that modern Persian is a language without grammatical gender. However, because gender identification has its roots in human mind and cognition, it has opened its way into the Persian discourse in the form of idioms, proverbs, and some words and phrases and it has received interactive mode. Although this shift of category status does not implicate social equality of men and women in Iran, it can bring about a change in the type of knowledge and reasoning and induce more flexibility on the part of the speakers involved. It may also show how language can provide the speakers with the opportunity to express the logical status of the two sexes in society without putting any biased emphasis on either sex. The author argues that modern Persian is easily capable of doing this.

Kerman province has a long history in poetry and humanities and its poets and scientists have played a great role in Persian culture. However, very little has been said about eminent Kermani scholars and poets in Arabic language and literature. This article introduces some of these figures who chose to write in Arabic between the fifth and six centuries (A.H.) but have remained in the dark to Iranian scholars.

Seeking to know about the vague future, to predict the course matters will take has been humankind"s age-old, spiritual quest and, to accomplish this, s/he has appealed to various means and different methods. Bibliomancy, ornithomancy and horoscopy are some of these means that have taken different shapes at different times. Bibliomancy and horoscopy are windows to a mysterious and unknown world. Bibliomancy is the offspring of hope while ornithomancy is the offshoot of disappointment; hence its repulsiveness in Islamic culture. Undoubtedly, the rich Persian culture is not exempt from the impact of these popular ideas and we may come across references to these in diverse shapes and in various works both in prose and in verse of eminent Persian writers. Alexander, the outstanding character of Nizami"s poetical work, Sharafnamah, begins his life with astronomers" horoscopy and accomplishes his great decisions by resorting to bibliomancy. This article argues that Nizami, deeply devoted to Islamic culture, tries to express his positive attitude when it comes to bibliomancy while he considers ornithomancy obscene. The writer, then, concludes that Nizami gives bibliomancy and fortune-telling priority in his work.

A survey into the degree eminent writers have drawn on or responded to their predecessors" poetical works may help us know these writers even better. Although a thorough investigation into all the mainsprings of thought available to a writer is far from being feasible, even the little we can afford will disclose to us parts of the references & sources which have gone into the corpus of his/her thoughts and works. The present study scrutinizes a number of parables from Saadi"s Complete Works to uncover his probable references, the manner he has drawn on these works and the conclusions he has drawn out of his parables.

One of the most important branches of practical criticism is textual criticism that deals with textual authenticity. This article highlights a single sonnet in both Shams-e Tabrizi"s Complete Works and Khaghani"s Divan. The author first rejects attributing this sonnet to Moulavi as a manuscription fallacy and then goes on to make use of this so-called sonnet to compare and edit a certain word in Khaghani.

This article discusses Shohar-e Ahookhanom, Alimohammad Afghani"s longest novel in contemporary Persian literature, which bears the hallmarks of various European literary schools. However, the writer argues that Afghani"s use of realistic aspects suggests that the novel"s predominant mode is realism, holding a mirror to the existing realities regarding characters and social conflicts. What"s more, the author sees a romantic undercurrent in the novel that may be read in the characters" visionary attitudes, in exaggerated descriptions and in the idealism surrounding both characters and situations. This presence of realism and romanticism, the author contends, adds to the merits of the novel.