JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF LETTERS AND HUMANITIES (UNIVERSITY OF ISFAHAN)
Year:2008 | Volume:2 | Issue:52|Papers Count:9

Iran and Russia's cultural and literary relations caused the works of Iranian authors like Sa'adi, Hafez, Moulavi and Omar Khayyam to have a great influence on Russian authors. Among the Russian authors, Ivan Bounin, according to his own statements, has been deeply influenced by Sa'adi. These two authors resemble one another to a great extent. In order to learn more about the world, they both traveled a lot. Both reproached the massing of wealth and believed the two main goals of life are ethics and savings for the Hereafter. Ivan Bounin, the last Russian classic literary author, had often talked of the influence of Sa'adi on his works. He owes his beautiful diction to Sa'adi's pearl-like speech. Bounin documents both his poetry and prose through Sa'adi's sayings. His love for journey is one of the characteristics that helped him find new philosophical viewpoints.

The narration of Adam and Eve's primordial sin is a fragment of mythic plot, entitled 'Evil raiding on the cosmos'. It indicates how 'pain and death' entered the human destiny. The interpretable manner of the man's creation story, specially his 'primordial disobedience and sin' causes that in the light of philosophical thinking and illumination, one story oftentimes be recreated in the words of mystics and the great religious men.In this research, by studying the opinions and theories as well as interpreting the symbols of narration an attempt is made to present a comprehensive collection of revelatory approaches and ideologies. Consequently it is good to know that mass of human cultures are outwardly various. Narratives just change formally and join together in the same archetypal pattern in the hidden 'collective unconscious'. The distinction is between narration techniques that are derived from theological view on man which determine the celestial aspect or terrestrial function.

Garshasb as a fable, epic and religious figure from Sistam in old Persian texts like Asadi Toosi's Garshasbnameh has a prominent role. In this paper, an attempt is made to analyze the image of this hero in different epic and fable texts with the aim of studying some concepts such as fortune, creation, monotheisimm, religion, mythic hero fighting, etc.To this end, the relation between the mythic Garshasb and the hero epic Garshasb is compared based on their thoughts, behaviour, ideology, and so on. The analysis is meant to investigate the extent to which Garshasb's bravery has influenced the imagination of people.

The present paper studies the first plays based on stories from the famous book - A Thousand and One Nights, at a time when dramatic literature was only beginning to emerge in Iran. As this book is known as a fable, we have first defined this term and then studied its development in human civilizations and its position in the art and culture of Iran and other nations. After that, there is a brief introduction to A Thousand and One Nights with a look at its influence on global art and literature.To further the study, to find the first Iranian playwrights who based their works on A Thousand and One Nights, we had to study the development of modern literature and drama. Therefore, we have taken a look at the political and social situation of the Qajar era as well as the innovative art that emerged in this period and helped create a dramatic literature that has been developing to this day in Iran.In the end, we have studied two plays representing the first works based on A Thousand and One Nights. These include: “The Harem of Harun al-Rashid” by Reza Kamal and “Sinbad’s Eighth Trip” by Parviz Natel Khanlari.

Amir Moezzi Neyshabouri is not only one of the most famous poets in Seljukian era but is also one of the fluent poets in Persian Pottery. His Famous ode which has been cited in so many biographies begins with the verse "O camel driver, stay nowhere but my beloved home". This ode is so famous that Hafez has adapted it in his Divan with the same wording but in different rhythm which demonstrates its importance. Unfortunately, despite the noteability of the ode, in all printed versions such as abbas Eghbal Ashtiyani, Nasser Hayyeri and Allameh Ghazvini, it has been recorded ambiguously and doubtfully with so many anagrams and alteration. These changes are so great that Allameh Ghazvini has expressed the inaccessibility to the complete correction of this ode. With respect to the fact that the oldest version of Moezzi's Divan is the written version in the years 713-14 (which is kept at the Library of India Office of England), and the editors of Divan have not used this version, the present researcher has tried in this paper to make a comparison and contrast between this version with the printed one with the aim of presenting the correct form of the ode.

In addition to Sanaeis' wisely perspectives evident in Hadigheh and his other works, his discoursing view is worthy of investigation. One of the important subjects of Sanaeis' view is about throne and that God has no place. Different views have been offered in this respect. Islamic mystics in interpreting the verse “God rests to throne” resort to explanation and consider the throne as the heart. But the great wise of the sixth century - Sanaei - has a different view.  He believes that 'resting on the throne' means 'preference' not 'place of sitting God' and since God is the creator of place, He is not included in the place and imaginary and simile are not true in His case.

The purpose of the research reported herein has been to contribute, ever so insignificantly, to the critical review of the Sufi heritage by analyzing the symbolic representation of Khirqa colors. To analyze the Sufis' cloak colors, and the symbolism involved, the relevant literary texts, both Farsi and Arabic, written between the dawn of Islam and the 8th century A.D., were reviewed. In this review, a logical approach was used which used the references made by Moslem scholars figures prominently. Initially different referred colors were listed and their symbolic meanings extracted. The 23 colors mentioned in the texts were then categorized in 9 sets. Only 12 of the 23 color-words are referred to in the reviewed texts as being symbolic. The logic behind the choice of cloak color and the criteria for doing so are also explored. Finally the Sufis preoccupation with the color of their Khirqa is critically reviewed.

SLA research in recent years has taken an interest in task, and different task conditions as a source of variability. Two sources of variability are gender and topic among other things. The present study examined monologic oral performance of 20 male vs. 20 female Iranian EFL learners on participant rated LCIT (the least culturally inhibiting topic), vs. MCIT (the most culturally inhibiting topic) addressed to male vs. female teacher regarding fluency, complexity, and accuracy. Data analysis revealed the following results: a) fluency varied significantly due to gender, and topic separately, b) complexity significantly varied due to topic, and c) accuracy demonstrated significant statistical differences regarding teacher gender, participant gender, and the interaction of the two. Topic influenced variability, and finally the interaction of all the three variables, i.e. teacher gender, participant gender, and topic significantly influenced accuracy of participants’ speech. Implications of the study are discussed.

This study intends to incorporate some insights to the newly-explored field of Third Language Acquisition (hence forth L3A). To this end, it investigated the acquisition of two syntactic properties of head and operator movements in English by L2 & L3 learners within the Universal Grammar UG framework. The participants consisted of 144 Persian monolingual and Arabic-Persian bilingual learners of English who were assigned to three proficiency bands after taking the general proficiency test (ECPE). This way there were six groups of L2 & L3 learners who seated for a picture description task and an oral translation test. The results showed no significant difference between the performance of monolinguals and bilinguals at each level of proficiency. Nonetheless, significant differences were found across the levels of proficiency. The findings, interpreted in terms of the view points of two current generative models of L2A, namely, Full Access Full Transfer and the Failed Functional Feature Hypothesis revealed no dominant role for L1 settings in L3 interlanguage grammar as the bilinguals did not significantly outperform their monolingual counterparts.