Literary Research
Year:2009 | Volume:6 | Issue:25|Papers Count:7

Myths are among those mass narratives which are constantly reconstructed, recreated, or reprocessed in a variety of forms due to their interconnection with archetypes and symbols. One of the best grounds for the emergence of myths’ manifestations in the contemporary era is in the form of novel. Surely, the tight link and mutual requisiteness of fiction with the world’s new events, added to the narrative features of novel and the potential of this contemporary fictional form in the reflection of diverse subjects and tastes, methods, manners, styles, that is in addition to the display of the common and popular thoughts, beliefs and discourses in the society, all together made the structure and narrative elements of novel become the most vast ground for the emergence and manifestation of myths or even hinting to them. The aforementioned approach in novelists who base their work on myths, paves the way for the inter-textual analysis of mythological novels as they use and reflect myths; which is due to the attention they pay to conceptual indications and the intended symbolical myths in the mind. The recreation of myths in the form of narratives in the new era should be considered one of the prominent elements in the deep influence of postmodernism literature. In this relation, the present article intends to analyze "Salmargi", with an inter-textual approach joined with narrative analysis. "Salmargi" is an Iranian post-modern fiction which has been shaped with two major and key mythological themes; one is the opposition of "life and death" in the form of mythological narratives of killing-the-son and the other "sacrifice"; with emphasize on the innocence and meekness of the heroes. While the major narration of the story is devoted to the Imposed War or rather influenced by it, "Salmargi" counts as one of the first postmodern experiences of the Iranian novelists about war.

The main approach of this article is discourse analysis through semiotics and semantics, while the basic assumption is; the verbal and figurative elements of a text can have meaningful interact only through an atmosphere with discourse features. On the basis of this assumption, it can be said that this is a tense relationship; a place in which the textual elements will earn their ''own'' discourse position before ''others''; in an atmosphere which features discourse imposition, in addition to inter-subjectivity. In the survey of the relation among the textual layers, it was realized that the discourser utilizes one of the textual layers as a brief discourse within discourse consigned, and then he reorganizes the same discourse in another textual layer. The most prominent achievement of this article was application of the theory of discourse systems by Landofski in the field of new studies, and presentation of a semiotic-semantic discourse pattern system entitled as "ideological discourse system"; the process of which were derived through the texts, exposed onto tensional axis. Once the several aspects of the relationship between the visual and verbal elements were surveyed, it became clear that in passing through the written or verbal text to the illustrative text, we come across semantic-semiotic events in the following order: functional change of narrative to mythological and the converse, functional change of ideology to narrative and the converse, the integration of semiotic systems; discourse and image, opportunity provided for the symbolic manifestation of signified items and value-making via a tense relationship, the multiplication of identical signified elements in a geometric system, providing an opportunity for a multi-dimensional reading, manifestation of the underlying layers of the text in a way that the signified elements find a superficial function.

The background leading to the significance of numbers in the phenomenon known as sacredness has roots in the thoughts of people from the primitive communities. From quite a very long time ago, mankind has believed in the magical characteristic of numbers and as a result throughout the past centuries, it has in certain cases paid attention to some of the numbers as if they are truly sacred. Not only has this phenomenon appeared and been expressed in the folkloric culture of human communities, but it has also emerged and been expressed in different fields of their literature too. Different world nations have underlined specific numbers regarding the primitive myths of their civilization and even blessed it as a sacred thing. As a result, different schools have been established; while each one has regulated its own particular ideology based on introducing a particular number as sacred. This issue has paved the way for the penetration of some of the most prominent and somehow sacred numbers into literature. In this respect, we can witness the vast reflection of certain numbers in the scope of Persian literature; while its frequency varies depending on the time and also the geographical position. This article intends to survey the historical background of the significance of number "three" and its function in Khaqani’s book of poetry.

In Holiday's linguistic theory, one of the factors which lead to the conjunction of a text's sentences is comparison. This factor, in addition to personal and allusive reference, forms three types of references in this theory; since according to Holiday when two things are compared with each other, they are actually referred to each other. Comparative reference is an indirect reference to alikeness, difference or the similarity of the referential factors. This type of reference is divided into two parts; common and particular. The common comparative reference is divided into three parts; alikeness, similarity and difference. Due to the high significance and precise survey of simile in the Persian language, an attempt has been made to mention the common points of this issue in the Persian literature and the Holiday theory. Holiday has also divided particular comparative reference into two parts; counting ones and descriptive ones. But in here the authors have added the comparative one to it too as a result of common comparison and the potential and possibility of comparison through simile in the Persian language. Based on Holiday's theory, cohesion has other factors besides reference; 1) substitution and omission, 2) vocabulary coherence 3) relevance. Since the author is studying the Persian language, he has added other factors which have a role in equilibrium of syntactical cohesion. As this discussion has a high scope, only one of the factors is discussed in here; comparative reference.

Habish-ibn-Ibrahim Teflisi is among the authors of the sixth century who possesses several works in the Farsi and Arabian language. One of the most famous works of Habish is "Kamel-ol- Ta'abir" which enjoys high significance due to inclusion of numerous Farsi words. This writing will initially introduce "Kamel-ol-Ta'abir'' in brief, then discuss and study its style based on the original version; an authoritative property of Chalapi Abdollah Library (inscribed in 772). According to Habish, one of his own undiscovered works titled "Semar-ol-Masael" is introduced in this book for the first time. In the next step, some of the rare and uncommon vocabulary of "Kamel-ol-Ta'bir" which are not recorded in Persian encyclopedia and dictionary, or there is no actual instance of their usage ever seen, surveyed.

The criticism and conveyance of the positive and negative points in mankind's ''will'' through the mystical point of view of Rumi (Mowlavi), is the major topic of this article. Through the analysis of the verses which discuss mankind's "will'' in Massnavi, different dimensions of Rumi's attitude about the ''will'' are clarified. Rumi consents with the belief of mankind’s will; a will that leads to a direct path and salvation in humans; yet he refuses a will which leads to rebel and obstacles the path of truth. Rumi also agrees with mystical fate which means men's "will" should be sacrificed for God's ''will'' alongside the ''will'' itself. He believes that God and his perfect creatures deserve to have ''will'' because will has made mankind the superior creature in God’s creation. After he proves mankind's will, he complains about it as will has led to mankind’s suffer and finally divided the universe into two poles of the good and the evil, depriving mankind of God’s presence. In Rumi's view, the trust that God gave human on the very first day was this will.

The common method for making compound words in Farsi is combination of single verbal or non-verbal lexicons or single bases of lexicons. All of the seven compartments of Farsi have a high potential for combinations. So far a lot of research has been written on the combination of some compartments of Farsi such as the verb, adjective and noun, yet there has been little research done on the other fields. The study of words which are derived out of pronoun, preposition, and semi-sentences paves the path for the combination of these linguistic compartments, in addition to showing the significance of this issue as a topic in research. This article intends to discuss the significance and potential of combination of demonstrative pronouns in Farsi, while expressing their type and role through discussing them in some samples of the contemporary Farsi prose.