CULTURE AND FOLK LITERATURE
Year:2020 | Volume:7 | Issue:29 |Papers Count:10

The local and indigenous ceremonies in Sistan region shows the rich and old culture of this region. Following the rural culture, people of this region have used poetry and songs sufficiently for maintaining and reviving the mourning ceremonies. Ardah-mourning or reading quatrain is a deeply sad and mournful song in the mourning ceremonies of Sistan. This study employs library study as well as some interviews with the informants to investigate Ardah-mourning and its uses in the mourning ceremonies of Sistan. The history, the performants, the performance, and the time and place show that people of Sistan use their own dialect for this cultural practice. Compared with other types, this practice takes the lyrics and the music as basic aspects of the ancient ethnic groups within Iran. moreover, the study analyzes the Sistani quatrains, its tone, rhythm, form, language, content, and literary features. It is general claimed that the songs and lyrics are devices to soothe the sadness among the people in Sistan.

The poems of fortuity are a collection of works written in the Safavid-Qajar period based on the algebraic thinking in the form of a story. Most of these poems are in the form of manuscript and they are more than 20. In this article, four prints and 11 manuscripts of these poems have been studied considering the elements of popular culture and literature. Although the poems of fortuity are written in the form of formal literature with a focus on the theological and philosophical themes, their linguistic and content characteristics prove that the main source of inspiration for these texts is the folk cultures and literature. The superficial approach to the fortuity that challenges the subject, being free of the complex philosophical reasoning and the promotion of fatalism thinking in these poems, the manifestation of popular culture and literature such as simple language and expression, the slang tone of these works, realization of superstition such as the belief in fortune, describing some popular traditions, reflecting some popular behavior, and describing personalities and places in the popular life are some indications of fortuity poem being influenced by folk literature. In terms of story structure, fortuity is also perfectly consistent with the structure of folk tales. Weaknesses in plot and verisimilitude, centrality of the events, static and dynamic characters, vague time and place and the omniscient narrative are some features that link these poems to the folk literature.

This study is based on the descriptive-analytic library method. Three tales were selected for this study: Darab nama Tarsusi, Hamza nama, and Amir Arsalan Namdar. Three motifs were considered in this regard: Darab Nama has a mythical, epical, and historical motif; Hamza Nama has an epicalreligious motif; and the motif of Amir Arsalan Namdar is romantic. The study, on the one hand, aims to investigate what categories of viziers' actions could be extracted from the Iranian folk stories and the factors which play role in this regard, and on the other, to pursue if these actions reveal any historical and social events or they are typical actions throughout the stories. The results of the study showed that there are two kinds of vizier; one kind is "Mobad-vizier" and another is "Sepahbad-vizier". From this point of view, the first one is cultural, social and juridical consultant and the second one is martial consultant. These two kinds of viziers are present in Darab Nama and Hamza Nama. Based on this dual division, the first vizier (Mobad-vizier) has roles such as fortune telling, wedding ceremony, ambassadorship, intercession, dream interpretation, political advisor and magic works. The other vizier, however, is a martial consultant and sometimes shows his treachery and skullduggery. Viziers in the story of Amir Arsalan Namdar are different from viziers in the other two stories. In this story, viziers are categorized as "vizier on the right hand" and "vizier on the left hand". Often the right-hand vizier is a well-mannered, kind-hearted, well-natured person and naturally the supporter of the main hero of the story. The other one, however, is an evil-minded, wicked conspirator and anti-hero. Lastly, it could be mentioned that Hamza nama and Darab nama are reflecting the social and historical events of the Sasanid era, while Amir Arsalan is related to the Qajar period.

Rituals are among the ceremonies that bring people together and preserve and reproduce cultural monuments in every nation. Among the people of Kohgiloye Vobir Ahmad, there are rituals, rooted in the ancient Iran, that represent plant themes. Among these rituals, which are still practiced today with the same style, are the Pol Borun, reading Sharbah, the sacrificial, Balagarduni, and Chalegarm Konun. The Pol Borun ritual is performed in the absence of a woman's spouse who cuts her hair and then buries it under an oak tree. In the sacrificial ritual, the animal is sacrificed under the oak tree at the top of the mountain or under the bush by the river to shed its blood as a sign of fertility. In the ritual of Balagarduni, in addition to planting patches on the tree to keep the evil eyes away, mountain plants are also used. In the Chalegarm Konun, while taking green plants to the tombs before the New Year's Eve, some Ash (food) is cooked with eight oak sticks and then divided among the locals. The purpose of this study is to analyze the vegetative signs in the rituals of the people in Kohgiloye Vobir Ahmad and explain the literary aspects of these local poems. This research is based on the field library study, qualitative content analysis, and the semistructured interviews. Many elements of herbal plants, such as polypropylene, mulch and smoking, sheding blood in the sacrificial rites, and pruning the graves have mythological representation in the Iranian culture.

The concept of power and its relation with ideology is one of the basic components of critical discourse analysis. In this article, the power position of one of Shah Abbas Safavi's chivalrous, named Hosein Kord Shabestari, is analyzed according to sthe face-threatening and face-saving acts against Shah Abbas's enemies. In the face-threatening act, Hosein Kord puts himself in the power position fearlessly and the audience in accepting the power position in different ways of expressions. In the face-saving act, there is a high frequency of facesaving acts for Hosein Kord and it sometimes belongs to Shah Abbas at a lower level. So far as these two acts are concerned, it is found that a chivalrous named Hosein Kord is in a high place, sometimes even higher than the Shah Abbas's place. This is why he uses facethreatening acts against Shah Abbas. The aim of this study is to show the position of Shah Abbas's chivalrous especially Hosein Kord so far as ideology is concerned.

One of the most important sectors of each culture is folklore, which consists of different dimensions. The present study, focused on the culture and literature of the Baloch people, aims to recognize in what dimensions the Baloch women have been embodied in the Baloch epics; secondly, what position they have in the society and their family? Therefore, the main objective of this study is to identify and interpret the mechanism that in Baloch epics provides for a specific situation and status in relation to the Baloch women. To this aim, the qualitative and documentary methods of analysis were employed; in order to better interpret the obtained data, some feminist theories such as radical feminism, social feminism, and liberal feminism were used critically to find out whether the issues that are extracted from the data could be discussed through these frameworks. The results show that the images obtained imply some dimensions such as: adversative of peace and lasting relations between the powerful chiefs; power and wealth; intelligence; bravery, and militancy; a shelter against danger; and the adversative of the family relations by doing wrong judgments. In general, it was found that women who are mentioned in the Baloch epics have an equal value and status compared with men.

Metaphors based on animal names are found in almost all languages and cultures, and thus, they can be considered as one of the linguistic universals. The present study has investigated the metaphorical application of animal names in addressing people as well as the primary concepts of each animal name in Bushehr and Shahr-e Kord of Iran. The analyses were based on the data collected from 200 native informants (100 from each region) through the questionnaires on the forms of address as well as the primary concepts of 70 animals (35 endemics to each region). Additionally, the morphological structures of the animal names were explored and the terms, phrases, expressions and proverbs related to each animal name were also listed. The findings show that when addressing people, native speakers, from the two areas under study, used their metaphorical interpretations of the animal’ s behavior to describe different traits and characteristics of people; some animal names are, therefore, used as address forms in the two regions. This indicates the fact that the human community reflects on the behavior and the attributes of the animals in their surrounding environment.

There are certain ideas about the complex personality of Sa'di, most of which could be traced back to a particular historical time and place. One of these beliefs, which was common since the middle or late 8th century (A. H) is the meeting of Sa'di and Khidr. In the 9th century documents, Sa'di is said to receive some spiritual teaching from Khidr. However, there are two older documents suggesting that this belief goes further back to the last years of Sa'di's life or possibly the early 8th century. One of the documents is written by a contemporary writer of Homam-e-Tabrizi indicating that Khidr gave Sa'di the secret of immortality.

Folklore and literature of each country is a valuable treasure which can be found in ceremonies, customs, tradition, and individual and social attitudes. Social and political culture shows the type of people's attitude toward collective life, its requirements and the network relations at the individual level and human society. Moreover, its effects can be found in the smallest and largest life affairs. The aim of current research is to study the attitudes toward collective life and its related issues in literature and folklore of Sirjan. The research questions are related to the attitudes toward social power and life and its individual and social components in literature and folklore in Sirjan. Thus, this research has tried to answer these questions using content analysis of words, terms, phrases, proverbs, tales and the existing legends in dialect and folklore of Sirjan. The findings indicate that the positive and negative elements such as participation, selfdetermination, duality, concealment, social responsibility, appreciation, relationships, pragmatism, realism are considered as components related to the social and political culture in folklore and literature of Sirjan.

In this article, the linguistic elements of folklore culture of Ta'ziyeh in Southern Khorasan are analyzed. To this aim, elements such as idioms, conjunctive verbs, titles, acknowledgments, murmurs, swear words, allegories, lullabies, proverbs, curses and words, are extracted. Then, each of these linguistic elements is presented with samples based on the method borrowed from Iranian Folklore Language and Literature and critically and analytically reviewed. The reviews show that the linguistic elements of the culture of Southern Khorasan's people are imported through the verses of Ta'ziyeh, as indigenous words, idioms, allegories, new compositions and other linguistic elements. These have undoubtedly profoundly influenced on the creation of the Ta'ziyehs, or at least the recreation of them, and has brought the language of Ta'ziyeh into the simple and common language of the people, thus, providing easy and simple expressions of cultural and expressive values. This has distinguished the language of the Ta'ziyeh from the official language. On the other hand, the texts of the Ta'ziyeh show that due to the proper links and connections among the constituent linguistic elements, the sentences in the texts of the Ta'ziyeh have a proper consistency and cohesion as well as suitable massages and expression.