The oldest comic playwright from ancient world, whose works have survived and reached us, is Aristophanes the Greek. Names of many comic playwrights are found during the 5th century B.C. in Ancient Greece, however, works of none of whom is survived virtually complete. Thus, the only criterion for judging comedies of Golden Age of ancient Greece is applied to the works of Aristophanes. He can be considered as the founder of comedy in the whole world. There is little information about him, and the truth of his life should be searched for in his plays. He lived at the time of catastrophic Athenian-Spartan and Athenian-Sicilian wars; traces of such fierce battles can be found in many of his works. Four of his eleven plays such as The Acharnians, Peace, The Birds, and Lysistrata have explicit plots against these wars. Ridiculing Athenian militant rulers, Aristophanes establishes his dream of a war-free Utopia. Aristophanes’ comedies have been translated into different languages of the world and performed many times in the past century and in the 21th century though twenty five hundred years have passed since their creation. One reason for the dramatic approach to his comedies may be his irreconcilable conflict with the war. Aristophanes lived around 448 to 380 B.C. His youth coincided with the powerful era of “Pericles”, Athens’ powerful ruler. Athenian-Spartan War took place in early years of Aristophanes’ youth, i.e. in 431 B.C, and out of Pericles’ ambitions. This led the young Greek comedy writer to leave his farms and lands, like many other people, and immigrate and take up residence in Athens like most people of rural Attica Peninsula. In his comedies, one can always see a suffering image of themselves throughout the history. Characters in his works often provoke our sympathy and depict the common pains of humanity before our eyes. He is always looking for the ideal way of life. Aristophanes has a dream of a utopian society in which corruption and waste have not penetrated, and has no trace of poverty and injustice and war. All his predictions came to realization during his lifetime. He witnessed how the agitators of war and armament merchants put Athens in fire and imposed poverty, forced migration and massacre on the society. Yet, his genius lay in that, in a land of fire and blood, he would find something to make people laugh while Athens was filled with dead bodies and dying men; and by the time the heart of the city stopped beating, the suffering writer still found an excuse to create a comedy. The author of the present paper specifically addresses the issue of war in the writings of the ancient Greek playwright. Although he was an open-hearted brave warrior, Aristophanes hated the wars destroying Athens, and severely criticized the agitators of war with the fearless and reckless language of his plays. He, specifically, expressed his opposition to the long-term Peloponnesian Wars in his works which will be discussed subsequently. This paper reviews Aristophanes’ social status in Athens’ war-torn society along with searching the roots of his hatred of war in his works.

Satirizing and humor have wide scope that sometimes echo severities and sufferings of human life. Undoubtedly, the self that is suffering from grave circumstance and crisis, escapes itself from this vortex through humor and satirical tools. Abuhayyan is one who despite skepticism to his life, gives comfort to the uncomfortable-self and saves it. Witticism of Abuhayyan about women is often abnormal and absurd because being suppressed from sexual instinct and being deprived of married life and motherly affection, he sees women merely a means of sexual pleasure and benefit. Similarly, his witticism about kids is a sort of childish dialect which is much considerable. In other instances, satirizing of Abuhayyan shows moral points and inter-playing with words, that is the testimony of his intelligence and repartee. Another type of witticism Abuhayyan pays heed to them, is mention the facetiae on the tongue of cheeseparing and parasites and gluttons that is preceded to his master Jahiz in many aspects. The last section of Abuhayyan facetiae is ridicule and comic portrait from people like Ben Abbad. These facetiae show that Abuhayyan replaces cries with laughter and his joking is mixed with a kind of latent bitterness.

AbstractNonverbal behavior constitutes a wide range of human behaviors that generate communication messages. To understand the social behavior of man, the human communication system must be studied; a non-verbal communication is a part of human communication that appears to be more effective and real. Behavioral or non-verbal communication is one of the proper or hermeneutic methods that occur and are interpreted in different circumstances, situations and contexts; itsorigin is individuals’ real and inner feelings, such as fear, anxiety, regret, grief, yearning etc.Since the concepts and subjects contained in the Holy Qur'an, along with all the interpretive capacities and religious arguments, include cultural and moral concepts, we tried to examine the non-verbal and behavioral communication that occurs through human hand.It seems that there are six non-verbal behavioral modes referred to in the Qur'an;most of them are the reactions of people at time of regret, such as (stinging the teeth with hands, falling in the hands,hitting hands) or due to fear (placing fingers in Ears), or because of intense anger (stinging fingers by tooth), or for the sake of being ridiculing (taking hand to the mouth). In this research, we try to explain these factors in the field of psychology, social science and hermeneutics by using analytical and descriptive methods and benefiting from the Quran and interpretations.key wordsFear, regret, anger, ridicule, hands, fingers

One of the most important strategies in the battle of champions and warriors in Shahnameh is Rajazkhani or harangue considered as a kind of soft war. Champions in most of their one to one battles speak highly of their heroic deeds and in this way try to belittle their rivals. This verbal battle accompanied with humiliation and ridicule is sometimes directed towards the rival himself and sometimes extends to his family and his race. What is important is that Ferdowsi with utmost skill and mastery and with numerous tactics organized words in the form of couplets and with a sardonic and sarcastic tone lets his champions utter the words. There are not many champions who do not use this tactic. Rostam holds the principal role in declamatory defiance of his rivals. His nobility and dignity would not allow the slightest insult from his enemies. Accordingly, this research is concerned with the study and analysis of different aspects of the structure and the content of harangues in the heroic section of Shahnameh.

Satire is a kind of beautiful literary trick that expresses human ugliness and shortcomings in a sarcastic way with a hidden chuckle for social reform. It is very difficult to discuss and review satire and satirical works of Persian language due to the lack of sources and information, because this important literary style is less studied independently and is more mixed with humor and especially ridicule. Satire is a special way of expressing poetry and prose, which is very effective and attractive by means of which the most important topics are expressed with the most delicate and at the same time the sharpest views and the most winning words. Satire plays an important role in the awareness and awakening of the public because it often expresses the obvious and bitter truths in a simple language that is close to people's understanding and replaces an opinion exactly in their minds. This research, which was carried out with a descriptive analytical method and using library sources, dealt with the role of satire in the Masnavi and the description of its humorous anecdotes, and it is clear that satire is used abundantly in Masnavi and Rumi used these anecdotes to express moral, philosophical, mystical, religious, etc. views and points.

Satire shares such common ground with other types of humor like lampoon and farce that it is very unlikely to consider an exact borderline between them. Moreover, satirists do not agree with each other on this realm. Adopting such an approach, in present article, we consider the Khaghani’s works, especially his Divan, and evaluate his attitudes about Satire regarding his poems. Nonetheless, the main part of our discussion is based on Khaghani’s techniques of satirizing because he used specific methods to create satire, depending on the atmosphere and conditions he confronted to and also for the sake of the stability of his words. Since it is impossible to investigate various examples separately and minutely, it sufficed to mention just few verses.

The word ‘humor’ in Persian literature has different meanings. In the contemporary period, it is used as a ‘literary term’ with a difference in definition compared to the joke. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the meanings of humor in specialized sources, cultures, and related books in contemporary literature in order to find a rather comprehensive definition. The two research questions posed in the study are: what meaning or meanings are meant by the term humor? Is it possible to consider a clear and unique definition of humor in contemporary Persian literature and what text is an example of humor? The findings of this research show that the different meanings found by ‘humor’ are related and overlapping making it very difficult to find a clear definition for the term ‘humor’ or a single use for it. Introduction The meaning of ‘humor’ is considered self-evident in the general studies related to this field. This is despite the fact that the word ‘humor’ like many words of the language has been used throughout history to convey different meanings, and the idea of ​​a single meaning for it in various historical texts is a false assumption. Based on this, it is necessary to determine first what is meant by ‘humor’ in any research and which of the different meanings of humor is intended. Accuracy in the different meanings of humor, describing the semantic changes of this word, or in other words, the development of the meaning that ‘humor’ has found in the Persian language and literature, and providing a model to express the relationship and ratio of the different meanings of ‘humor’, are the most important topics that the present study has addressed. Materials and Methods This research has been done in two parts using the descriptive-analytical method. In the first part, an attempt is made to understand ‘what is humor’ through the accuracy of its lexical meaning. Finding the roots of the word humor and accuracy in the meaning of this word in various historical texts and based on the chronological order of these texts could indicate the change or development of the meaning of this word over time. In the next section, it is pointed out that the word ‘humor’ has been used as a ‘literary term’ in the contemporary period, and on this basis, it is necessary to ‘define’ this term precisely. Research Findings Humor is used in Persian literature with different meanings: 4-1. Humor in the Literal Sense: Ridicule The Persian literary works of the 5th to 8th centuries AH show that the primary meaning of humor in the Persian language corresponds to the meaning of this word in the Arabic language or a meaning close to it. The use of humor to instill this meaning has continued in the works of some writers and poets of the early years of the 14th century. 4-2. Semantic Development of Humor: Jokes ‘Laughter’ is not only the consequence of the semantic spectrum surrounding the word mocking, but more than that, it is the consequence of another semantic spectrum, which today can be considered as the central word ‘joke’. In different eras, words and terms such as Mataiba, Fakahe, Hazel, Elegance, Joke, Latifah, and Khusmezgi have been included in this spectrum. The first semantic evolution of the word ‘humor’ in the Persian language caused the meaning of this word to develop and include this range of meanings in addition to the previous meanings. 4-3. Semantic Transformation: Humor as a Literary Term What became the basis for the evolution of the meaning of the word ‘humor’ as a literary term was the acquaintance of Iranians during the Qajar period with European literature, especially comedy shows and literary satire works. Paying attention to examples of the literary term humor and finding its importance in literature was one of the details of this change of literary discourse. The change in the literary discourse caused works such as ‘Cherand and Parand’ by Dehkhoda, which was published in Sourasrafil newspaper, the poems of ‘Ashrafuddin Qazvini’ in Nasim Shamal newspaper, and the play Jafar Khan from Farang, written by Hasan Moghaddam, which were considered among the distinguished works of that time. However, with the previous literary standards, these works were not worth much. Discussion of Results and Conclusions ‘Humor’ is used today as a word that means joke, mockery, and the words close to these two. In contemporary literary texts, humor and mockery are still used with synonymous meanings. Humor is also used to mean jokes and humor. Besides these, humor is used as a kind of literary expression. The literary term humor has the cultural and literary coordinates of the Persian language and is not a translation of any foreign term. There is no uniformity in the translation of Western terms into Farsi, and in different books, the term humor is equivalent to different words. In the contemporary period, none of the different meanings of humor have been lost and humor is still used in its various meanings. Despite the efforts that have been made in recent decades, this literary term does not have a precise and agreed-upon definition, and its characteristics are mostly described. According to the presented meanings, examples of three different meanings of humor are sometimes indistinguishable. It is possible to show the texts that both the literary terms of humor apply to them, they are related to jokes and humor, and they are examples of sarcasm and mockery. But the ratio of these texts is not the same with each of these three concepts. Examples of the literary term humor can be shown as a set within a triangle, one vertex of which is humor, the second vertex is a joke, and the third vertex is mockery. The distance that each item has from each of the three vertices of the triangle indicates its relationship with the literary term humor, mockery, and joke.

Background: Humor is an important quality, which is highly effective in human communications. Despite its advantages, if humor is not used correctly, it may have unethical outcomes, springing to the mind a vague picture of humor’ s intrinsic morality. Therefore, the current study sought to explain the nature of humor and compare it with similar concepts in order to establish its limits as a behavioral quality. To this end, the paper conducted a narrative review of existing definitions and theories in the relevant papers and books as well as English and Persian dictionaries. Conclusion: The Results: showed that humor (a quality) and sense of humor (a combination of personal attributes) are positive ethical concepts that may produce negative outcomes in case of the following: (1) imbalance and (funny) content violation (exceeding the humor limits), (2) excessive use of humor (in terms of frequency and periodicity). As a result, humor is likely to have unethical outcomes, but sense of humor is always a positive behavioral quality. To demarcate humor morally, it is necessary to compare it with similar and related concepts; such a comparison requires the following: (1) intention and purposefulness (positive and well-meant), (2) minor violation. In line with this, this paper compared humor with several similar concepts including witticism, jokes, sarcasm, irony, mockery, derision, teasing, etc.

When we investigate contemporary poem of Iraq and its reformations, we find many poets in literary map of Iraq applying their poetic aptitude as an arm to support Iraqi nation’s ideal and to struggle against tyrants. Ahmed Matar, an Iraqi poet, is one of the most eminent resistance poets recognized as a first class cultural and jihadi person. He has developed important theories about motherland, dominion and politics. This poet has been affected by Holy Qur’an, its terms and meanings. Also this principle is obvious in his poetry works. He has defended his motherland, and has struggled in this way, and has been exposed to the suffering of pain and dispersion. His poems and ironic method are a backlash, live outcry, biting critique against Baath Regime and its suppressible behaviors, and disclosure the conspiracy of regnant powers, spies and aliens. The present article, by emphasis on descriptive-analytical method, investigates the concepts of ridicule (sarcasm) and its samples in Ahmed Matar’s poem. It also attempts to investigate his biting ridicule method in Iraqi society and the amount of its influence on Iraqi people’s awakening for struggling with rebellion, encountering with autarchy and contesting against contradictions, ignorance and false slogans of the society.

The title of this essay is about Mahdi Akhavan Sales’ dissatisfaction of his environment and society in which he lived. Having studied and surveyed all his verses and bringing about the reasons for his dissatisfaction, I conclude that hopelessness which is seen in some of his poems, virtually has another reason in relation with himself and his fellow countrymen in society which has showed itself in various forms, the most important of which are: raging with anger, hate and imprecation, ridicule and buffoonery, invitation to struggle and hope or lamentation, even depression and despair.