Persian Language and Literature

A Structuralist Investigation of Despairing and Anxiety- Provoking Images in the Poem Akhar-e Shahnameh by Mehdi Akhavan Sales

Asad Abshirini

Akhar-e Shahnameh (The Ending of Shahnameh) is one of the brilliant poems of Mehdi Akhavan Sales, which took on a form of despair and anxiety under the influence of the coup on 19 August 1953. Many personal and social conditions and factors influenced the formation of these two emotional categories, but in Akhavan’s poem, perhaps more influential than the death of relatives was the failure of the national movement due to the events related to oil, which revealed feelings of despair and anxiety in the mind and soul of the failed contemporary poet. Akhar-e Shahnameh has the potential to be studied with new literary approaches and especially with structuralist criticism due to its narrative aspect, old Khorasani dialect, syntactic anomaly, and coherent structure. The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between and the structure of despairing and anxiety-provoking images and their contrast with happy and hopeful images in Akhar-e Shahnameh; because examining the image structure in this poem helps us understand the difficulties of Akhavan's poetry. This research uses an analytical-critical method. Adopting the approach of structuralist criticism, an attempt has been made to examine the anxiety-provoking and despairing images of this poem in two horizontal and vertical axes so as to explore the grounds for its glory and coherence by means of literary criticism. The findings of this research show that in this poem, Akhavan employs more than sixty-five despairing and anxiety-provoking images using imagery tools such as irony, metaphor, simile, symbol, paradox, etc., in the two axes of coexistence and substitution to draw the atmosphere of the 1950s, which was full of despair and anxiety.

The Hermeneutics of Silence in the Ghazals of Shams

Farzad Baloo

In order to understand the meaning of existence, Heidegger analyzes the existential possibilities of the German word for existence, i.e. Dasein, and among these possibilities, he pays special attention to the relationship between language and existence. In addition to speaking, he considers silence as one of the linguistic possibilities. According to Heidegger, linguistic silence has the potential to reveal existence much more broadly than just speaking. This revelation of existence and hearing the voice of existence in silence gives it an interpretive quality, which Heidegger calls hermeneutics. Since in our mystical heritage, Mawlana Jalaluddin Muḥammad (Rumi) speaks of silence and reticence in most of his ghazals, the authors of this article believe that in the light of Heidegger's conception of silence, new horizons of this concept can be opened up in the ghazals of Shams in order to show its interpretive and hermeneutic features in the following propositions: “from the unworldliness of Dasein to the annihilation of the truth-seeker in the general sense and its connection with silence”, “from Dasein's transition from the linguistic position to the linguistic annihilation of the truth-seeker in the specific sense and its connection with silence”, “the hermeneutics of silence and the reception of genuine speech from Dasein to the truth-seeker”, and “Rumi's hermeneutic silence and the reception of genuine speech” as proof of this claim. By proposing genuine silence, Rumi provides a ground for the soul and the world of existence to speak up and to display the shortcomings and inadequacies of language and to reveal the secrets of the universe. Attention to the hermeneutic aspect of silence in the ghazals of Shams distinguishes the present article from the existing research and a new achievement in the field of Rumi research will emerge.

The Overlap of Žižek’s Trauma Theory and Magic Realism in the Novel The Dead Dolphin by Hassan Bahrami

Narges Bagheri

The term “trauma” is used to refer to a situation in which a person’s psyche is harmed by a traumatic event. Žižek argues that trauma is the result of unexpected intrusion of the Real (event) into the Symbolic (symbolization) and acquires meaning in the structure of the Deferred Action. People’s reaction to any traumas is acting out or working through. In the acting out process, the patient displays sign of mental disorders like nightmares, yet in the working through, the patient hides mental suffering in the subconscious and fantasies and transfers the sufferings to another place by means of creating a fetish narration. Regarding the psychological nature of the trauma, the patient is unable to convert it into the Symbolic, and this psychological problem can be recognized only by its symptoms in the person. However, psychologists believe that the only treatment for trauma is to change it to the Symbolic. This study aims to investigate the way of representing trauma in the novel The Dead Dolphin by Hassan Bahrami. The findings show that he has successfully overcome this challenge by utilizing magic realism and its imperceptible combination with trauma features. Through combining local myths with trauma and taking advantage of their dual and contradictory nature, Bahrami has created a strong link between trauma and magic realism and portrayed the character’s trauma. This study proves that magic realism is a proper technique for writing psychoanalytic novels to represent and symbolize people’s trauma.

Life Style Instruction, a Subgenre of Didactic Literature: A study of periodicals from 1911 to 1941

Mohammad Reza Haji Aqababaei

Life style and its relevant issues are among the subjects that have been paid attention to in the didactic texts of Persian Literature for a long time and which have sometimes been called as ‘household policy’ or ‘household management’. Since the late Qajar era, attention to issues such as life style and its instruction was booming and it seemed that didactic literature became widespread with a new style and technique. In the present study, periodicals of the late Qajar and the first Pahlavi eras were reviewed and articles related to life style issues as well as comments made by their pros and cons were analyzed. Among the most important subjects discussed in the periodicals mention can be made of social life, arranging formalities, house management principles, physical health and clothing etiquette. Through reviewing published topics about life style in the late Qajar and the first Pahlavi eras, it can be concluded that movement towards modernity was advertized in different areas and western models were introduced to the Iranian society as superior examples of life style. However, in some cases these models were not much compatible with the Iranian life style and the culture of Iranian society. On the other hand, it seems that only women were to be instructed in life style and men did not require such teachings. This was due to the dominant cultural views of the then Iranian society.

The Interactive Role of Linguistic and Narrative Elements in the Textual Configuration of “Arash the Archer”

Sayyed Ahmad Parsa

The interaction and correspondence of a set of linguistic, literary, narrative, and discourse elements form a network of relationships with varying degrees of influence in connection with the text. The combination and integration of the views of theorists in linguistic, discourse, and narrative fields prevent the researcher from giving a one-sided account and pave the way for achieving more desirable results. In this study, using an integrative approach, we have attempted to present some of the most important linguistic, discourse, and narrative elements as effective factors in meaning formation, and to describe the position and the role of each of these elements in the text to understand the intra- and extra-textual aspects. To this end, the present research based its analysis on Halliday and Hasan's three-tiered theory of linguistics (context, agents, and mode of discourse). It also referred to Riffaterre's views for the description of the discourse context in poetics. Regarding the narratology, reference has been made to some statements of structuralist narratologists, and finally, for the description of discourse agents, Van Leeuwen's (2008) views on discourse and actors have been utilized. The results of the research show that firstly, the foundational theme and discourse context in Arash the Archer's poetry is the reproduction of the anticipation and hope for liberation through the emergence of a hero and savior. Secondly, the agents (actors) of discourse are divided into two main categories: the agent of action and the recipient of action. Arash, in the role of the sacrificed hero, is the agent of action in the narrative, and the people of the city, who are passive and waiting, are represented as the recipients of action. Thirdly, due to the specific discursive and ideological field to which Kasrai belonged, he omitted the ‘king’ character in the narrative.

The Contiguity of the Theoretical and Practical Music in the Two Modes of Delicate Imageries and Exotic Imageries of the Indian style of Persian Poetry

Seyed AmirAbbas Setayeshgar

The use of music is one of the most useful techniques in poetry, which poets use to convey their thoughts. Owing to their mastery in music, some poets have employed it to express their reflections and to portray poetic images more than others. The frequency of the discourse of music in the poetry of this group of poets and the imagery created through it shows their mastery over music, both in terms of theory (in topics such as organology and the study of tunes and melodies) and in terms of practice (which is performing and composing music). Using a descriptive-analytical method, the present research aimed at investigating the means of the theoretical and practical music in the divans of two of the foremost representatives of the Indian style (sabk-e Hendī) of Persian poetry, i.e. Saeb Tabrizi, the leader of the mode called delicate imageries (nazok-khiyali), and Bidel Dehlavi, the forerunner of the mode called exotic imageries (dour-khiyali). First, by giving examples, the concepts of music in the poetry of the two poets were examined and then both views were compared in the field of music. The results indicated that mastery of music would highly contribute to the decoding of secrets of the poems. In effect, without finding the musical roots (as a specialty and profession) it would not be possible to gain the correct and precise understanding of some couplets. In fact, this method of applying musical concepts is not a sign of distant knowledge of the field, but it implies a kind of scientific and close knowledge. The result of this study – which is the explanation of the combination of theoretical and practical music in the two modes of delicate imageries and exotic imageries of the Indian style – indicates the three main branches of the association network, the theoretical-practical knowledge and the link between poetry and music.

“Afsaneh”: Recognizing a musical term in Persian poetry

mohamad Taheri

Music, with a history of thousands of years among Iranians, both as one of the fine arts and as a practical art, has been present in various aspects of individual and social life. In addition to reflecting this presence, the long and close relationship between music and poetry has filled the collections of Persian poetry with musical terms, names of melodies, tunes, instruments, and composers. It is clear that over time, some new words and terms have become popular in this field, while some have remained obscure and eventually forgotten, and some others have undergone verbal or semantic transformation or fluctuation in their scope. On the other hand, a true understanding of the meanings and even receiving many artistic aspects of texts depends on mastering the different semantic features of words and the implications of terms. Undoubtedly, one of the important functions of writing commentaries on the works of the past is to explain the meaning of obscure words or the transformed meaning of a still-common word, and also to inform the audience of the idiomatic meaning of words and combinations that without mastery of them, the reader's understanding of the text is not possible or at least incomplete. Researchers have identified and introduced a large number of forgotten musical terms in the texts, but it seems that some of these terms are still overlooked. "Afsane" is one of these terms. In this study, using content analysis and descriptive-analytical method, the musical aspect of this term has been investigated and the artistic subtleties of a number of verses, which were hidden in the shadow of the forgotten idiomatic meaning of the word, have been revealed.

A Comparative Study of Nima’s and Akhavan's Poetic Actions Based on Pierre Bourdieu's Theory of Action

Zohreh Fallahi

In Bourdieu's theory of action, the literary work is the reproduction of cultural capital and the result of a combination of economic capital and the habitus. Additionally, it is a social action that a person shows in the literary field. Poetry, as a literary work, is a product of the mental dimension of cultural capital, which appears as a material success and objectified by the poet. This research compares the poetic actions of Nima and Akhavan with an approach to the capital and field based on Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory in order to answer the questions of how the actions of these two poets are expressed with their decisions and how they react to the actions of others and the socio-political conditions of the society. The background of the research shows that many researchers paid little attention to this matter. The methodology of this study, in terms of nature and method, is descriptive-analytical and regarding its purpose, is fundamental-theoretical. The results indicated that both poets have similarities in some poetic actions but have different reactions in some others, the process of which is writing social-political poems in the field of Persian poetry production.

Compilation of Integral Hermeneutics in the Image Frame Based on Heartless by Mehdi Akhavan Sales

Rashin Mobasheri

Each branch of hermeneutics is like a slice of reality. Integral hermeneutics confronts us with a larger part of reality. Since the image contains more information than the text, in integral hermeneutics, using the capabilities of the image, the elements related to the analysis of the author, the text, and the audience can be integrated together in an interactive space and displayed as an image. In this article, the poem Heartless (Biedel in Persian) by Mehdi Akhavan Sales was analyzed based on the integral hermeneutic approach, which first examines the elements of the text and the author's situation and then using psychological analysis, looks for external examples of text elements in the life and circumstances of the author. The results of this study showed that the depth images were used based on the proof images through the possibility of visualization (visualization of freedom in the pigeon). The depth image means the use of secondary aspects of words and the proof image means the author's attempt to express one’s opinion and to attract the audience. According to imagery structure, the ‘dove’, ‘blood’, ‘tower’, and ‘lost’ are in the focus as the central images and the poetic images are created by employing the secondary meaning of words using description and symbolization. These images have a lyrical tone due to the ‘akhrab makfouf’ present hexameter. Moreover, this poem has a socio-political function and like a critical statement, it portrays a regressing society as a result of the coup. The poem uses cinematic imagery because it has a narrative and rich imagery to take advantage of the secondary meaning of words. In fact, using symbolism and the secondary meaning of words, the poet tries to win the support of the audience regarding his intention, which is taking a stance on a historical, political, and social event.

Analyzing the Concepts of Light and Darkness in Kasrai’s Arash the Archer Based on Greimas’ Isotopy and Actantial Model

Rahman Makvandi

Arash the Archer (Ārash-e Kamāngīr in Persian), a narrative poem by the Iranian poet Siavash Kasrai, is one of the favorite poems among those interested in the Persian literature. The poem deals with universally attractive themes such as homeland, heroism, chivalry, and self-sacrifice, the novelty of which is never lost. These features make the poem rich in meaning and constantly make it apt for analysis and writing. In this research, which adopts a descriptive-analytical method, the poem is analyzed by the application of isotopy and the actantial model, concepts introduced by the French semioticain, Greimas. The high frequency of words in the semantic field of light and that of the semantic field of darkness in this poem can indicate the idea that alongside the physical war between Iran and Turan, a clash between light and darkness is also present in the poem. Considering light as a symbol of knowledge and darkness as a symbol of ignorance, from a semio-semantic perspective, this poem represents a clash between knowledge and ignorance on the one hand and light and darkness on the other hand. The results of the research show that in Kasrai’s narrative of the ancient epic of Arash the Archer, Arash is represented as a unique hero who is different from many other famous heroes both in action and character. The findings also indicate that in this poem an ancient myth has been represented in a modern and realistic fashion. In this narrative poem, Arash is represented as a hero whose actions, unlike those of many ancient heroes, are directed not by hubris or wrath, but by reason and wisdom.

Exact Repetition of a Historical Experience in the Creation of Poetic Images: An analysis of the stylistic position of Sorush Isfahani’s images

Mustafa Mirdar Rezaei

Mirza Mohammad Ali Isfahani, mostly known as "Sorush" and "Shams-al-Shoara" was one of the greatest poets of the literary return movement and the Naseri era. One of the factors of the fame and excellence of this poet's position among the literati was his ability to skillfully imitate former poets. Previous research indicates that Sorush was most inclined towards the poetry of Farrokhi Sistani. Based on a quantitative-statistical method and a stylistic approach, the current study tries to present reliable statistics on the amount of the poet's use of art and rhetorical techniques by examining the structure of the poetic images of the Divan of Sorush Isfahani. In addition to determining the level and quality of the structure of Sorush's images in terms of their simplicity or complexity, an attempt was made to compare the structure of his poetic images with that of the images of poets of preceding styles, especially by investigating the claim of the similarity of his poetry to that of Farrokhi. Based on our data, the images of Sorush's ghazals have the most complex structure, and the images of his masnavis have the simplest structure. The structure of images in Sorush's odes is surprisingly similar to the image structure of Farrokhi's, as if despite the historical distance, both structures belonged to the same poet, and this means an exact repetition of a historical experience in the creation of poetic images. The same thing happened in another aspect: The structure of images in Sorush's ghazals is exactly on a par with the structure of images in Saadi's ghazals.

A Critique of the Method of Compiling Lesson Excerpts for the Persian Prose Course: A case study of excerpts from Tarikh-e-Bayhaqi

Mahdi Nikmanesh

Curriculum planning has always been based on the needs, opportunities, and constraints of each academic discipline. Meanwhile, due to its indigenous roots and cultural significance, the field of Persian Language and Literature has long held a privileged position. Hence, compilation of instructional materials in accordance with established principles and rules is of significant importance in acquainting students of this discipline with classical and contemporary texts, whether in verse or prose. However, this undertaking is accompanied by constraints such as instructional time, compilation of content for pedagogic purposes, considerations related to assessment, and the like. In this research, six selected excerpts from Tarikh-e-Bayhaqi, which were compiled for pedagogic purposes, were analyzed and critiqued in terms of page layout, editing, and pedagogical aspects. The results of this analysis were presented in multiple tables for clarity. Through this study, the authors surveyed the structuring of the mentioned excerpts and explicated the principles and regulations of developing excerpts for pedagogic purposes.