Nameh Farhangestan
Year:2006 | Volume:8 | Issue:2 (30)|Papers Count:19

The view has wrongly developed that the expanse of contemporary Persian literature is confined to the novel, the short story and poetry. Contemporary Persian literature has a much wider expanse encompassing many other literary genres. These, as compared with the classical genres, may be divided into five groups as follows: those that are written in the continuation of classical literature; those that are traditional in nature but which have a modern flavor; those that have parallels in classical literature but which fall into no established genre; those that are not literary in the strict sense of the word but whose subject matter is literature and those that have no parallels in classical literature but whose genres have developed in the 20th century. The writer argues that there is no gap between Persian classical and modern literature; and that in spite of obvious differences between the two in terms of content and form, the spirit of Persian culture has remained intact; if the modern Persian literature, the writer maintains, has failed to produce great works such as Ferdowsī's The Shahnameh, Rūmī's The Masnavī and Nezāmī's kamseh, that is because the golden age of literature is no longer revived with the rise of literary champions; rather, it is the sum of individual works that find an amazing value. In line with other cultural phenomena, literature has shown a strong tendency toward democratization. If We look at literature from this perspective, we will observe a great number of worthwhile literary products. What are specially worthwhile is the developments made in contemporary Persian, developments the like of which cannot be observed in any period in the history of Persian. In particular, these developments have expanded the potential of Persian for writing literary and expository texts. However, there are still shortcomings and gaps in such areas of Persian scholarship as the history of Persian literature, Persian Grammar and literary criticism. The contemporary literary period, the writer concludes, is distinct from its predecessors in various respects. In this period, literary texts have undergone fundamental changes, promising an even more fruitful future.

Long before the extensive use of Arabic script for writing Persian, Persian-speaking religious minorities (Jews, Christians and Manichaeans) used their own religious scripts for this purpose. In other words, the oldest extant Persian texts that belong to the period before 447 AH/1055 AD, were written in three different non-Arabic scripts: Hebrew, Syriac and Manichaean. These texts belong to a period in the history of the Persian language that is usually referred to as "the dark period". In this paper the author examines the phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical characteristics of Old Persian documents. The purpose is to shed some light on lesser known aspects of "this dark period".

Conversion is a derivational process through which a word normally used in one word-class takes on another word-class without any change in its form. For example, the word foroosh, which is the root of the word forookhtan (to sell), can be used as a noun. In this paper, the writer first proposes criteria for discerning the original word-class, and then discusses various types of conversion, e.g. adjective to noun, noun to verb and adjective.

In the early 19th century, the French Academy of Inscriptions and Literary Sciences turned their attention to RAšīD AI-DīN Fazlloāh's Jāme' AL-Tavārīk, and the great French scholar of Iranian studies, Etienne-Marc OUATREMERE was assigned to translate it into French. He presented the first volume in 1836. In the same century, the Russian I.N. BÉRÉZINE and the French Edgar BlochET made attempts to translate and publish the book. The greatest amount of research on the book was conducted by the Czechoslovakian scholar Karl-Emil-Oskar JAhN in the 20th century. In this century, Iranians also published parts of the book. Mohammad RoshAN, having published the section on Mongols independently, presented a complete version of the book based on the most reliable manuscripts available in Iran and abroad, adding detailed lexical and textual explanations to it. The present article is an examination of the first volume of this book.

Sohrab Sepehri and William Wordsworth belong to two different cultures and poetic traditions. In spite of obvious differences, however, the two poets deal with a common theme. The purpose of this paper is to examine this common theme from a comparative point of view. The two poems selected for this comparison are Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey and Sepehri's Water's Footsteps. The writer first presents a synopsis of each poem. This is followed by a brief discussion of the language and structure of the two poems. Next the writer presents a thematic comparison of the two poems, claiming that both poems are in fact strongly inspired by pantheistic doctrines. The writer also presents in the appendix a translation of the full text of Tintern Abbey, so that the reader may have a better understanding of the poem.

To familiarize oneself thoroughly with Jakobson, it is essential that one read his articles; he has not discussed his ideas in book form, nor has anyone else done so. A scholar with diverse interests, Jakobson has been influential in launching scientific movements and circles. Thus knowing him seems to require great efforts. A study of his ideas shows that in all his scientific endeavors, he presents the perspective of a linguist interested in literature. This fact that he is first and foremost a linguist in whatever idea he expresses may help the scholar get a better view of his ideas.

The question of "common pronoun" has been widely neglected in the studies of Persian grammar. Structurally, it takes three different forms: 1) kod āmadam; kod amadī, ... 2) kodam āmadam, kodet āmadī, ... 3) kod-e man āmadam; kod-e to amadī, ... In certain cases, the writer argues, these three forms are free variants, but in some other cases they are used in complementary distribution. On the other hand, in some cases, the shared pronoun is used as an emphatic pronoun and in some others, as personal pronoun.  

Even though in the prosody of Persian poetry, syllable quantity and, consequently, vowel quantity are relevant, in special circumstances, the necessity to observe the metrical pattern results in a change of vowel quantity. In this paper, the writer, discussing the theoretical issue of the change of vowel quantity in Persian poetry, examines this issue in the sonnets of Hāfīz, kājū and Salmān Sāvojī, using statistical samples of sonnets of the same rhymes and rhythms. The study provides answers to the following questions: 1) Is the number of changes of vowel quantity dependent on the metrical pattern? 2) What is the maximum number of vowel quantity change in a line? 3) Is there a difference between Hāfīz sonnets and those of kājū and Salmān Sāvojī in terms of the number of changes of vowel quantity? 4) Is the number of special changes of vowel quantity different in the sonnets of Hāfīz kājū and Salmān Sāvojī. It is to be noted that the statistical data used in this study was obtained using the intelligent software of Persian poetry "Simia", designed by the writer and that the hypotheses of the study were tested using statistical tests.

The word sīlī (used today in the sense of "slap") makes no sense in the proverb " sīlī -ye naqd beh az halvā-ye nesīye" (literally: an instant sīlī better than deferred halva) (idiomatically: a good grievance better than a bad compensation; or, a sparrow in hand is worth a pheasant that flieth by), unless it has a different meaning. In this paper, the writer argues that the word sīlī is a kind of food, similar to halvā, which has not been recorded in dictionaries.  

Studies of Old Persian, Middle Iranian languages and Modern Persian language and literature in Czech began in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Since then, the Czech scholars have carried out detailed studies, producing valuable sources for further study and research on modern Persian language and literature. This paper presents an account of the contributions made by Czech scholars to Persian studies.

This section consists of two parts. The first part is a translation by Ahmad SAMiEE (GilANi) of one of NikiTiNEa's articles entitled "Historical Novel in Modern Persian Literature". In the second part, T. SAdjEdi presents a short biography of Basile NikiTiNE the Russian scholar of Persian language and literature who was secretary and interpreter of Russian Consulate in Rasht in 1911 and the Russian consul at Orumiyeh during the years 1915-1918. The information about NikiTiNE's life has been taken for the most part from NikiTiNE's autobiography The Iran I have known, which was published in 1941 in Paris.