Nameh Farhangestan
Year:2008 | Volume:9 | Issue:4 (36)|Papers Count:19

The main question addressed in this paper concerns the meaning of "contemporary" and its difference with "modern" and "recent". The term , contemporary seems to be used in three different meanings: modern as against traditional; existing during our period; and alive and existing at the present time. The writer discusses each of these meanings to show the difficulties the historians of contemporary literature are faced with. The writer then discusses the difficulties of writing the history of contemporary literature and argues that some of these difficulties explain the conservativeness of the academic criticism. The writer then suggests that "the contemporary literature" be used to refer to the last ten years.

This paper discusses the word sanduq (chest or case), a Persian word used for more than a thousand years. Quoting examples from Persian texts, the writer shows the various instances the word has been used. The word, the writer illustrates, has been used to refer not only to a place of storage but to the following as well: coffin; wooden networks or hollow cubic gravestones placed on tombs, a place for keeping valuable objects and documents; a box where magicians kept their tools; a box for keeping. and transporting books and, specifically, for keeping volumes of the Qur' an. The word has also entered into many figurative expressions such as sanduq-e sine "The chest", sanduq-e sar (The chest of the head), sanduq-e sa' at (the chest of the clock), etc.

Ever since Arabic was spoken in the Arabian Peninsula, it borrowed words from persian. In the Pre-Islamic period, the most important Arabic document survived is the Jahiliyya period, on whose authenticity many scholars have cast doubts. In this collection of poems, there are about 100 words. In the Qur'an, too, which is the first written document in Arabic, there are about 30 Persian words. In the first century after Islam, the process of borrowing words from Persian was slow, but in the centuries that followed, the number of Persian loan words increased drastically. In Abu Novas' poems there are about 300 Persian words; in The Story of Abolqasem Bagdadi, written by Abu Motahhar Azdi, the number is 260, and in Tanuki's Nesvar, the number is 170. This paper limits itself to the book Nesvar. At first the writer refers to the knowledge about Iran and Iranians mentioned in the book. Then he explains twenty obsolete Persian words and finally presents the full list of Persian words used in the book.

This paper discusses the meter of the sonnets of Mohammad Qahreman, the most prominent sonneteer of today's korasan. The writer, limiting himself to “hasel-e omr”, Qahreman's most accomplished collection of poetry, divides the meters of Qahreman's poems into four periods or decades, and describes each period. The first period, from the beginnings to 1971, includes 45 sonnets. The second period includes a total of 68 sonnets written between 1972 and 1981. The third period includes 131 sonnets written between 1982 and 1901. In this period, Qahreman has written his most innovative meters. The fourth period includes the sonnets written between 1972 and 2001. This period is characterized with a sudden drop in the number of sonnets.

‘Arafat al-Aseqin’ is a famous Persian book of biographies written in the early eleventh century AH by Taqi aI-din Owhadi, Iranian poet and literary man living in India. The book, not published yet, includes the biographies as well as selected poems of more than 3000 poets who have written poems in Persian. The book is particularly interesting because in it there are biographies and poems of certain outstanding poets which are not found in any other book. However, the most valuable section of the book concerns the biographies of the writer's contemporaries. Owhadi knew many Poets, Iranian or Indian, who wrote poems in Persian. Yet another interesting aspect of the book is the biographies of the women poets, 24 altogether. In this paper, the writer has extracted the information about these women poets from the book and has compared it with the information from other sources.

The purpose of this paper is to study, within the framework of cultural studies, the cultural values to be found in the Persian idioms and proverbs. The study is based on the conviction that the study of Persian proverbs and idioms, though most of them are not used today, reveal the cultural characteristics of the Iranian society and the Iranian nation. The research method used is quantitative, and the data collected is based on content analysis. The results show that the proverbs and idioms contain advice on three main issues: acquiring wisdom, being ethical and studious.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Mowlana's deconstructionist attitude towards supplication. Supplication is a special concept in the many-sided mind - of Mowlana which finds a different manifestation in every minute. It is formed, like the whole Masnavi, in the endless play of signifiers and signifieds, in the relativity of meaning and in the many facets of understanding.

This paper presents an analysis of the form and content of the poetry of Qeysar Aminpur, showing through examples the thoughts of the poet, and the dominant themes and the stylistic characteristics of his poetry. The writer argues that the poet's turning away from romanticism in his early years to realism in his later years has resulted in the gradual disappearance from Aminpur's poetry of the signs of idealism, subjectivism, and escape from the urban life and return to the village, etc. This, the writer concludes, indicates that the poet has gradually come to terms with the realities of life. The writer also touches upon the poet's use of humor as one of the inseparable characteristic of his poetry. This paper only deals with the poetry of Aminpur, leaving untouched the many other facets of his personality.

In this paper, the writer, having presented a brief biography of Manucehr Atast, traces the development of his poetry. Atast started his career with writing romantic poetry of the type written by Tavallali. Gradually, however, he turned away from that type of poetry as he came to know the poetry of Nima and other modern poets, even though the poet's love for nature survived, turning into a permanent motive in his poetry. The images he presents of the sea, the beach, the desert, etc., are among the most beautiful parts of his poetry. The other characteristic of his poetry is his combination of the lyric with the epic.

Many "versions of the translation of Tarik-e Tabari have survived in manuscript form. The most noticeable difference between all these manuscripts is in the introduction to the book. In the older manuscripts, the introduction is in Arabic but in more recent manuscripts the introduction is in Persian. An examination of the introductions shows that the Arabic introduction is written by Bal' ami and the Persian introduction by an anonymous writer a little while later at the time of the invasion of Qarakani Turks and the fall of the Samanid dynasty. The way, the name of Mansur ibn nuh Samani has been mentioned in the two introductions shows that the Arabic introduction was written at the time when the king was alive and the Persian introduction was written after his death. Also, in the version with a Persian introduction, there is a chapter on "the history of the world", which is missing in the versions with an Arabic introduction. Finally, the writers claim that the Persian introduction, written in the realm of the Samanid government, was a response to the demand of the people of korasan and Transoxania, who demanded independence from the Baghdad government.

This paper discusses. the achievements of the Samanids (873-999 AD) in the survival of Persian as one of the oldest attempts at planning the Persian language on a scientific basis. It was because of this planning that Persian was promoted to the language of the common language of all Iranians and was developed. The writer also addresses the question why Iran, while accepting Islam, did not accept Arabic as its national language, as did many other countries. Having introduced the concepts of standard language and formal language, the writer presents the fundamentals of language planning of the Samanids.

In this paper, the writer makes a comparative study of the terms of basic physics in Persian and Tajiki which are similar in form but different in meaning and the terms which are similar in meaning and different in form. The study is based on valid references in both languages. These include Vazename-ye Fizik, published by Markaz-e Nasr-e Danesgahi, Logat-e Moktasar-e fizik be se zaban-e Rust, Engelisi va Tajiki, and Vazename-ye Logat-e Rusi-Tajiki-e Estelahat-e fizik. To make this comparison, the writer has chosen loan words in both references and compared their equivalents in Persian and Tajiki. The results of the study show that the differences in spoken and literary forms of the two languages have affected the choice of specialized equivalents so much that the terms cannot be mutually used by speakers of the two languages.