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This article revisits 'brag' and 'bragging' in the battle field in Ferdowsi's Shahname. To this end, in the first section, the denotative and idiomatic meanings of brag and bragging are examined and their historical background in ancient Greek, Arab and Iranian as well as the literature of the fourth and fifth centuries are briefly illustrated. The second section aims at exploring Ferdowsi's artistry in dealing with the techniques of bragging in the battle field by Shahname's champions and presents an evaluation of functions and the rhetorical values of bragging as utilized in ferdowsi's story-telling discourse.

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The narrative focus has a significant role in the analysis of those techniques that the storyteller uses in creating his own stories. The point of view, with respect to its semantic extension in modern narratives, is a special aspect by which the narrator shapes the temporal, cognitive – emotional and ideological components of his story and the narratee is sometimes led to read the text when the narrator changes and creates various points of view and presents different views. Therefore, the story finds a dynamic process by an interaction among the narrator, the character and the reader. In the story of Rostam and Esfandiyar, the narrator portrays the setting, incidents, characters and their actions, thoughts and inner feelings in an aesthetic and beautiful way and this is done by using different and changeable narrative focuses. In addition, the narrator provides presentation, evaluation and judgment of the story by his absence or presence in some parts of the story and also by combination of two ways of narration and drama. Furthermore, sometimes the narratee is led to a more effective and sincere inspiration of the story by narrating the story from the characters’ point of view.  In addition, the narrator expresses his own doctrines and special ideology by using non-narrator focus or the characters’ words; as a result he prepares the situation for the presentation and conjunction of different views or opinions, and in this aspect it equals many modern narratives. The analysis ofa few parts of this story can show Firdausi’s exceptional genius in his creation of this universal masterpiece.

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One of the popular stories in Shahnamehis Rustam’squestto Mazandaran in order to rescue Kavoos and his soldiers, which led him into killingDivSepid (the white demon), rescuingKavoos from captivity, and also entrusting Mazandaran to his children. This story, which is known as Haft-khan Rustam, has influenced a number of heroic poems, manuscripts of rhapsodies and oral/public narrativesof Shahnameh. The influence that these works have from the narratives of Rustam’s battle with the demons of Mazandaran can be classified into two categories: first, in many of these texts, are various narratives about or references to Rustam’sjourney to Mazandaran and his battle with DivSepid. Second, in some Iranian epic texts, be it poetry or prose, a number of demons or descendants ofDivSepid are present that each try to take revenge on Rustam or one of the members of his family. But, in all of these stories, they either have failed or were killed by the hero. Although these types of narratives have briefly been expressed in most of Iranian public prose literature, they have been expressed in more details in a number of texts including ShabrangNameh, ShahriyarNameh, and TheNew BorzoNameh. In this paper, first, these types of narratives in some heroic pieces of poetry are addressed. Then, common grounds or differences of these stories with the narrative of Shahnameh are analyzed.

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