Literary Research
Year:2010 | Volume:7 | Issue:27|Papers Count:7

This paper intends to elaborate the basic thought frameworks of dark poetry in the west and declare its links with schools such as the Baroque, gothic novel, grotesque, absurd e. g. .Then the sub-structural elements of dark poetry in contemporary Persian poetry- which in majority of cases include some philosophical ideas and also interweaves the social and political historical situation- are surveyed in brief. Following this, the variety of this type of poetry as manifested in both Forogh Farokzad and Nosrat Rahmani's poetry are shown by making a comparison. Through the descriptive-comparative analysis method I realized that these poets are similar due to bearing concepts such as 1) grief, 2) failure 3) disappointment 4) darkness 5) loneliness 6) doctrinal abnormal words 7) mention of physical pleasure. There are however some differences between them, as followed: 1) difference in motive for bitterness 2) different understanding on love 3) different methods for expression of humor 4) difference in creating images and finally 5) difference in fight against the norms.

The extent and quality of religiosity and belief in faith has always been a controversial issue discussed in monotheistic religions. For instance how does the truth of religion manifest within the inner and outer appearance of a follower's life? And what are the circumstances for the comprehension of religion's essence and approaching the highest ranks of faith? The divine religions offer recognizable patterns which can be followed for answering such questions. All the truth of any certain religion has become concretely materialized through the existence of such patterns and the highest expectations of religious legislator has been manifested through their personality, temperament, words and deeds. Based on this religious discipline, superior examples entitled as "knight of Faith" have been created in philosophy and mystical literature. Attar Neishabouri finds his "knight of faith" in the historical and most controversial character known as "Mansoor Halaj" on one hand and literary figures such as Sheikh Son'an and Oghala Majanin on the other hand. On the opposite side, Soren Kierkegaard, the existentialist philosopher and Christian theologian, claims Abraham to be the vivid instance and concrete example of "knight of faith". These two scholars are closely attached because of their shared belief in approaching the threshold of real faith and conditions for earning the rank of the knight. In their views, "forbearing major issues which cause attachment" is the sole and exclusive condition for approaching the high and lofty rank of faith. Such issues are intermingled with a person's individuality, identity and nature and their abandonment equals with self negation. This study surveys the shared thoughts of these two intellectuals through a comparative and interpretative approach.

Interpretative approaches bear a unique status in Persian literature; particularly in mystical literature. Einol Qozat-e-Hamedani is a prominent example of such interpretative approaches. The most vivid literary feature of Einol Qozat is his unique perception about an issue known as "paraphrase". It can be said that in Persian prose, no one has ever discussed "paraphrase" to this extent and in such detail before; except Einol Qozat. The major concern of Hamedani in most of his works is to interpret and paraphrase whatever that has been expressed in a coded language and explain how it can be appropriately understood. He enjoys exclusive and fresh horizons in paraphrase and interpretation which are stunning.This article tries to discuss Einol Qozat-e-Hamedani's position in hermeneutic queries; in the common hermeneutic fields such as text comprehension, text pleasure, connection between word and meaning, single-meaning and multi-meanings. Further on it intends to express his link and association with hermeneutics discussions- which has turned into an extended and developed approach in understanding humanistic knowledge in the last decades- away from any aberrations and exaggeration, answering this basic question; can the traditional opinions of a deeply thought author who lived a thousand years ago be adapted and reconstructed in the framework of modern hermeneutical theories and modern literary criticism approaches?

"Mythological criticism" bears an anthropological base which interprets and paraphrases a literary work or some of its themes through to the in-depth structure of its archetype. In this study the story of Keikhosrow in Shahnameh is surveyed within the qualitative research method based on mythological criticism (with tendency and emphasize on archetype). The researcher has tried to interpret the alteration sequence of his myth regarding this approach. According to this approach, Keikhosrow, king and the glorious Kiani priest, is a lofty and ideal symptom of the "hero" archetype. The building blocks of his myths are: the symbolic being of water as an element and the myth of baptism, the power of granting blessing and remand of rain and greenery to nature, being in possession of the prediction cup, passing through the honorary trials to God's salvation, battle with Afrasiab, which is a repetition of the eternal sample of the battle between good and evil and its symbolic disappearance implying his eternal return and is one of the symbols of the archetype of "death and rebirth". The in-depth structure related to the archetype of this story seems to be; Keikhsrow is the "perfect human" of the Iranian epic at the end of " a great cosmic day"- which started from the "first human" (Kiomarss); turning the mythological history of Iran to a repetitive and systematic truth about the cosmological circle of creation.

Since love forms the core intellection and wisdom system of Mowlavi, all ideas and addresses expressed in Moulawi's works is made based on love. For this reason, analysis of the connection between the inner and outer world in Massnavi is also done regarding the attitude that Mowlavi- as the creator of the work- had on love. According to this approach, love for Moulawi is like the purgatory world between the inner and outer world. In this respect according to Mowlavi, issues interpreted in terms and expressions such as the correspondence of countries ad people, intuition and the unseen, appearance and interior, abstract and concrete, territory and heavenly kingdom, earth and sky, body and soul etc all depend on love and one of its manifestations. Based on this view, love and God's fondness and love for recognition has become the motivation for a movement due to which everything has become absolutely concrete from abstract – finite has raised from the infinite, form from inform, and eternity from preexistence- and therefore maybe it could be claimed that the entire creation has appeared in this manner.This research intends to discover some manifestations of such belief in Massnavi written by Moulawi and further on elaborate it. The research method is descriptive- analytic, and by considering the title and the demands of the study, it has utilized the hermeneutics approach for the interpretation and paraphrase parts of Massnavi's text.In brief the outcome of the study shows that in line with the common belief of mystics who claims that humankind is the mirror of truth and God's representative, Mowlavi believes that love in mankind is like a purgatory which draws thought towards the domain of manifestation and expression. Therefore from an ontological point of view, love is like a mirror which reflects the beings of the other world within appeals and representations of this world.

Mowlavi is a theoretician poet in Persian literature whose worksespecially Koliat-e-Shams and Massnavi- are enriched with critical views. In this paper Mowlavi's linguistic and literary views are discussed. This research was carried out by relying on contemporary literary criticism theories, particularly Roman Jakobson's Theory of Communication. The analysis of the major elements of communication, meaning the language's features and characteristics, message (poetry), sender (poet) and receiver (addressee) in Mowlavi's poetry construct the basis axis of this paper while each of these elements is divided into smaller components. In order to identify the position of Mowlavi's theories in the contemporary era, his standpoints have been compared with some other schools and literary criticism theories in brief. Among them the most prominent ones include; new criticism, formalisms, structuralisms, and supporters of reader-response theories. The capable reader versus the novice reader, active and inactive, concrete union, cohesion of poetry's form and content, relation between mind and language, link between signified and signifier, language codes etc are among the common discussions of the mentioned schools with Mowlavi's ideas.

The transition eras are quite significant in the precise depiction of the process of literature history and defining causes and reasons for change in literary genres and also the literary taste. In the Iranian history of literary fiction, transition from the long traditional story (romance) to novel is among the most prominent transitional periods. This paper reviews the early works similar to novel created in the Persian literature, then surveys reasons leading to the creation of the works written during the transition era, showing how the series of factors related to the court of Naser-edin Shah Qajar, although made this change slow, was ultimately influential in forming the direction of this change in the path of literary fiction towards the novel era. As a matter of fact it can be said that the Naseri court was the transitional path from the traditional story towards the novel era.