LITERARY TEXT RESEARCH (PERSIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE)
Year:2012 | Volume:15 | Issue:50|Papers Count:7

Due to fragmentary and wide-ranging subjects in literary biographies, literary histories, bibliographies and other references, some subjects are mentioned which are not reliable in terms of authenticity. A case in point is the numerous works considered to be dah-nameh (Ten letters). Sometimes this situation arises as a result of the mistake made by some researchers who prejudge or blindly rely on the quotations without further investigation or reference to the original works. Theybelieved a minor similarity in name, lexical - and not terminological - reference, personal recollection and observance in a book to be a compelling reason for considering a literary work as belonging to a certain genre; in a way that 23 poems are recorded as dah-nameh, half of which are not truly of this type.The research questions in this paper are: What is investigated and reviewed based on theories related to literary genres? What criteria and tools are most useful for determining literary genres? Do all works called dah-nameh truly belong to this literary genre? At the end, by eliminating 11 works considered to be dah-nameh, only 12 of them remained. Seven poems fully meet the criteria for being classified as dahnameh. These poems include Manteq al-Oshshaq by Ohadi Maraghe’i, Mohabatnameh by Ibn Nasouh, Oshshaq-nameh by Ubeyd Zakani, Tohfat al-Oshshaq by Rokn Sa’en Semnani, Rouh al-Asheqin by Shah Shoja’, Rozat al-Mohebbin by Ibn Imad and Mahboub al-Qoloub by Hariri. There are another three works belonging to dah-nameh genre, including Oshshaq-nameh by Araqi, Sohbat-nameh by Hemam Tabrizi and Si-nameh by Amir Hussein Heravi. However, two works, including Rozat al-Asheqin by Aziz Bokhari and Eshrat-nameh, were left uninvestigated.

This paper discusses the grounds for and manifestation of Romanticism in fictions by Mohammad Bahman Beigi. Social and political developments in Iran and acquaintance with European literature and culture at the end of Constitutional period and in Pahlavi regime provided the necessary ground for popularity of Western Romantic works and their translation into Persian among Iranians. The influence of the sociopolitical atmosphere in the society, and the personal traits, spiritual homogeneity, tribal life style, the exile and distance from the family all led Bahman Beigi to the Romantic School. However, by purifying the features of this School, he avoided its radical aspects and created pleasant works which move between reality and imagination. The imaginative and real aspects of his works are so mixed that make their distinction difficult.

One of the basic features of contemporary modern stories is the use of numerous narrative devices. In order to present their novice ontology, contemporary modern writers have always used complex narrative techniques and avoided classic and linear narrations popular in previous centuries. Hoosang Golshiri is a contemporary writer who created complex, multi-layered and difficult works by using countless narrative devices. The complex narration in stories by Golshiri is one of the most important features of his writing style. This research analyzes the narration of the short story called Ma’soum-e Dovvom (“The Second Innocent One”) based on the theory of Genette who’s a theorist of structuralist narratology. After explaining Genette’s theory, three narrative levels of the story, the narrative text and narration of this short story along with the components linking these levels, namely “tense: order, duration, frequency”; “mood: distance and focalization” and “voice or tone” are analyzed and discussed. Therefore, the techniques and devices used by Hooshang Golshiri in these works are shown, and it is revealed that he used these narrative components in a modern way. This paper aims at showing that an investigation into the narrative structure of Golshiri’s works helps one to understand their complexities and know more about their semantic aspects.

The 1953 Iranian coup d’état is one of the significant and influential political events in the past century. Constitutional and Islamic Revolutions are two other important events in this century. In addition to the widespread reflection of the said coup d’état in fictions, it also affected the formation of literary symbolism movement. Due to the heavy political pressure in the society, many intellectual writers fighting for democracy used a coded and symbolic language to criticize the sociopolitical issues in Iran. They focused on issues such as failure of National Movement, hopelessness of people, domestic hegemony and influence of colonization in Iran. The reflection of the 1953 coup d’état in contemporary fictions has not been investigated in literary researches. Therefore, this paper aims at a descriptive-analytic discussion of how the coup d’état is reflected in the works by Ebrahim Golestan. The result shows that the said event is reflected mostly in themes, characters and settings of Golestan’s fictions. Themes such as lack of unity among people, intrusion of foreigners in political and cultural arenas, objection to the pressurized and unsecure atmosphere in the society, and hopelessness, failure, suspicion and emptiness of fictional characters and description of a hegemonic and dark setting are all reflection of the 1953 coup d’état in Golestan’s works. By resorting to symbols, Golestan indirectly criticizes the society.

the present paper discusses how the intratextual audience is selected based on the personal experiences of some prominent poets of the Constitutional era. The research questions are: 1. Which aspects of personal experiences did mostly affect the audience selection by the poets? 2. Did different experiences lead to distinction of style in selecting the audience? A deductive methodology is selected to carry out this research, in which different audience types; particularly intratextual ones are categorized and defined, once the works of the poets in Constitutional period are carefully studied. Then, the biographies of these poets are used as data providing personal experiences. The data is presented with focus on family, education and studies, beliefs and social roles, and the effect of these experiences on selection of intratextual audience are discussed. The result shows that personal experiences lead to differences in style when it comes to audience selection. A closes analysis of the method of selection reveals the thoughts and worldview of the artist. The structure and frequency of different intratextual audiences also show the identity of the poet’s potential or ideal audience.

As a communication means, letter plays a significant role in Shahnameh. This paper classifies the letters in Shahnameh into three categories in terms of communication levels: letter from superior to inferior, inferior to superior and letters exchanged between counterparts. This paper also discusses the components of these letters, which are usually different depending on the subject and the recipient, and also how they were initiated and delivered. Moreover, the subjects and materials mentioned by senders before and after writing the letter, stipulation of the name of sender and recipient, the seal and function of letters in Shahnameh are also dealt with. The present research mainly aims at becoming familiar with the history of letter writing in Iran before Islam and analyzing the letters in Shahnameh in order to set them as pattern for today’s correspondence. Given that Shahnameh’s letters show the method and customs of correspondence in Iran before Islam, description and explanation of their analysis can help to improve letter writing techniques.

Based on morphology of three stories in Shahnameh, the present paper attempts to make a critical analysis of “sequences of hero’s functions” in Propp’s theory of morphology. To this end, three stories in Shahnameh are first investigated from a morphological perspective. The hero’s functions are the same and seem to have identical structures in these stories; however, there are differences in their variable elements. After analyzing the similarities and differences, it is concluded that stories don’t fit into one category based on function per se, and that the effect of some variable elements too must be considered in classification of stories. This is so because, although the hero’s functions (departure, love, test, wedding, return) are limited and the same in these stories, some other variable elements such as social environment, hero’s identity and protagonist have influenced the sequence of these functions.