JOURNAL OF LITERARY CRITICISM AND RHETORIC
Year:2014 | Volume:3 | Issue:1|Papers Count:10

Abstract In present paper, we try to analyze one of Maxim Gorky’s specific types of characters which almost all assess his works with. Studying some works of his fictions and considering the biography of author, it can be claimed that Gorky had been the one who knew these types of people very well, lived with them, experienced their plains and sufferings profoundly and made them to be entered through his literature. Just like Gogol and Chekhov who introduced the idea of “little people” to literature, Gorky brought the concept of “vagabonds”, the homeless and the gypsies into the general course of story-writing. He considers unique traits for his barefoot characters and expresses these traits through the language of his heroes. Gorky’s barefoot characters are potentially heroes with the appearance of refugees and wanderers. The vagabonds of Gorki’s stories have some main features: liberty, freedom, pure thoughts, turbulent and frenetic soul, and also not being restricted in pre-defined frameworks of life.

Undoubtedly, the disability to express the mystical experiences is what all mystics in East or West have rigid consensus on; it means that mystical facts and high concepts obtained through intuition aren’t possible to be expressed. Jalal al-Dīn Muhammad Balkhi, Mowlavi has clearly explained in his masnavi the different forms of the issue and actually shows the literal difficulties to express mystical experiences. To express mystical facts and concepts there exist four barriers: subject, teller, speech, and listener. So the author, in present paper, tries to show Mowlana’s viewpoint about the above mentioned barriers in his Masnavi. Although he has extensively spoken about each of the barriers, but what has him hurt more than any other things and prevents him to express the listener the divine truths. So it can be said that listener has been the most important one out of the four main barriers, as Mowlavi believed, which made him to speak about in Masnavi.

Intertextuality of literary-historic figures is one of the artistic techniques of poetry in modern era being used a lot by contemporary Arab poets. Because of their proximity to Arab contemporary poets, the previous classic poets have a great share of the call. Among the previous poets, Abul ‘Ala Al-Ma’arri, known as the philosopher of the poets, with his philosophical attitudes and strange lifestyle and despite his blindness, was one of the greatest poets of the golden era of Arabic literature and achieved a considerable proportion of these intertextualities. In present paper, we initially try to review Al-Ma’arri’s intertextual character as a new critical approach used by contemporary poets to qualify the manner of poets confront such technique.

Despite the diversity among Iranian women writers of literary texts in the years after the islamic revolution, especially since the 1990s on, a clear sensitivity to the issues of women and sexual relations is obviously traceable. Most of these authors have propounded their similar thoughts about Iranian woman using the same techniques and formalistic components. Parande-ye-man (My Bird by Fariba Vafi) and Mahiha dar shab mikhaban (The Fishes sleep at night by Soudabeh Ashrafi) are outstanding novels created through 2000s that their study can help us to get better understanding about literary evolution occurred in that decade and Iranian fiction writing. The present study analyzes the two above mentioned novels with respect to formalistic components considering the issue of their “Feminine Writing”. Consensus of scholars and literary critics was the major criteria in selecting these novels among other works created by women through 2000s. This study shows that both Iranian female writers in above cases have used similar measures such as: selection of female narrators, narrating the stories in similar locations such as homes, kitchens and other feminine circles, men’s negative characterization of women, putting emphasis on the theme of patriarchal domination of the society, emotional separation between men and women, women’s solitude, and unfaithfulness of men.

The aesthetics of the stories of holy Quran means identification of beauty and art in its expression. The Quran is not a book of fictions, but its real stories, with religious and educational purpose, have artistically been expressed, with a rhetorical style and dynamic images that one can realize its artistic aspects in content and structure. The geometric structure of its stories makes it possible to find and study most of fiction writing elements such as character, incident, dialogue, plot, time and place in its text. These elements have specifically been used in different positions according to the purpose and function of the stories. The first three elements, od\f above-mentioned elements, have predominantly been used in Quran stories. Although plot has made a strong relation between the components of its stories, time and place are the elements have received little attentions. None of the story elements are the essential purpose of Quran. In present study, besides the terminology and lexical meaning of the words beauty and story, the style, the method of expression, and the story elements of Quran are what would be studied.

One of the main subjects of rhetoric is assigning the truth and falsity of declarative sentences. If a proposition may be assessed as a truth or falsity, it will be considered as a declarative sentence, otherwise it will be compositional. There were some theologians and philosophers who brought up the discussion of truth and untruth of declaration for the first. Although all literal propositions are not consistent with the language of logic, but illogical movement is clearly of their features. The literal propositions aren’t necessarily declarative, but they aim to induce a new understanding of the phenomenon and the world around. In this study, considering the views of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars about the truth or falsity of propositions, I realized that the truth or falsity of propositions should only be assessed by their origins and a review looks being necessary about the assessment of a proposition accuracy in semantics.

Attempts to define poetry have occupied the minds of many writers for a long time. Although all people believe in the existence of poetry, but there is not a consensus on what it is. The diversity of definitions about poetry has led some writers to know basically poetry undefina-ble, for a widely accepted definition has not yet provided. There have always been some kinds of poetry which have broken the restrictions of existing definitions and have found clear inconsistencies to the tra-ditional criteria of poetry. A short contemplation on proposed defini-tion about poetry helps us to reach this conclusion: “Poetry creates wonder in language by language itself.” Therefore any wonder the po-et creates in the language can be called poetry. Expressing his emo-tions, imaginations and visualizations with the help of his profound thoughts, and using the musical potential of the terms, the poet creates wonder in language and makes the audience or the reader to share with him. This undeniable fact in the realm of poetry has resulted in an explicit consensus on poetry definition between belletrists in East and West, so that they seem to accept the mysterious nature of poetry as a proved fact.

The name of Sadegh Hedayat(1903-1951) reminds many people of a pioneering author in Fiction, with works having a lot of advocates and opponents. Hence, many studies have been conducted regarding his works in the area of stories and translation from French, but his researches on and translations from the Pahlavi Language has less been noticed and analysed, however, he was one of the leading authors in this field and had left many works. In this study, one of these works: “Zand i wahuman Yasn” is going to be examined, criticized and compared to the only existing translation by Mohammad Taghi Rashed Mohasel. This text, with faith content related to the Zoroastrian beliefs regards the end of the world and the quality of victory of goodness over badness. A line by line examination and comparison between these two translations shows how successful Hedayat was in following the grammatical rules and selecting suitable equivalents in order to transfer the concepts.

Literary fiction can be criticized and analyzed through different approaches and literary schools. Meanwhile, the most attention has been devoted to realism, as the most important and permanent intellectual concern of many writers. Iranian modern literary fiction has shown its affection to realism from the beginning, and most of Iranian writers have tried to illustrate the social-political situation of their period; however, their realism has occasionally been moderated by some features surrealism and symbolism. In present essay, after explaining the main principles of realism in fictional literature, we would have a critical review and analysis on the impact and presence of realism in Iranian fictional literature from its rise up to the end of 1970s. We emphasize on the quality and the amount of famous Iranian writers attention to realism; so it can be said that the expansion of the subjects has been accomplished upon each of the writers approach to realism and his perseverance in creating realistic novels and fictions.

Neo-classical sonnet, created out of Iran’s classic poetry, is one of the contemporary poetic movements which have always been dynamic. The purpose of its leading poets was to make the traditional form of sonnet attuned with modern requirements. This poetic movement has benefited the poetic possibilities of which free verse has provided for Persian poetry in terms of locution, language and literary elements and has created new aspects in classical sonnet; for instance we can refer to the combination of lyrical and epic literature through neo-classic sonnet which contradicts many definitions of literary types and has paved the way for creation of a new literary movement, namely epic sonnet. The combination of lyrical and epic literature in neo-classic sonnet would be reached in two ways; “utilization of epic symbols and motifs” and “epic nature of neo-classic sonnet”, which will be discussed in great details in the present research.