نشریه نثر پژوهی ادب فارسی
سال هجدهم شماره 37 (پاییز و زمستان 1394)

As one of the approaches of cultural studies, postcolonial criticism analyzes reflections of colonialism in literary texts. In this kind of cultural criticism, the researcher aims at rereading and deconstructing the colonial discourse, and hence it is tied up with the two issues of ‘the colonizer’ and ‘the colonized’. Since the post-colonial critique is concerned with dualities such as ‘Self’ and ‘The Other’ or ‘the colonizer’ and ‘the colonized’, it is undoubtedly considered as one of the areas of comparative literature studies. From the perspective of this criticism, the writers, in accordance with the procedures and orientation for or against colonialism, portray some of its aspects in a literary text. Relying on post-colonial theories, this study investigates the novel "Days of the Gun" by Habib Khodadadzadeh. It was also concluded that the decolonizing writers often try to take advantage of mechanisms such as nativism, aggrandizing the colonized “I” versus the colonizer “other”, emphasizing the superiority of the ethical codes of the colonized, owning up the colonizer’s assets, inverting the possessor-possessed equation, redefining colonized history from its own perspective, objectifying the concept of “other”, and imposing Eastern cultures on the West. This study also claims that writers can wipe out some of the consequences and negative reflections of colonialism through such texts and play their roles in vitalizing cultural and national traditions.

Language is a mental system which appears as an instrument or phonetic structure and its main role is communication and transmission of idea among people. Using different language rules and disciplines and making different types of words, people try to communicate with each other in different contexts. Therefore, obviously, language is not separated from people’s life and activities. In fact, language accompanies people from the beginning to the end of their life. The present study is about the use of onomatopoeia in Sepehri’s Hasht Ketab. The results show that Sepehri, uses onomatopoeia abundantly in his poetic language, and it helps the reader to understand his text better. The theoretical basis for this study is the views of the Danish linguist, Otto Jespersen and others referred to in the book A Glossary of Persian Onomatopoeia. These people name as onomatopoeia any word between whose sound and meaning there is a natural relationship.

Woman and her functions are among the most important issues in mythology and epic in a way that Carl Gustav Jung introduces woman-mother as one of his archetypes. Based on the different cultures and societies in which women live, they play different roles in the mythology around the world and in Iran. Women’s functions appeared as goddesses in myths, and as great deeds by great women in epics. The effects of goddesses on women in epics are either direct or indirect. One of the reflections of female functions in epics is their attitude in their lamentations and dirges. This is an analytical-descriptive study to examine the lamentations and dirges of some prominent woman figures in Shahnameh such as Tahmineh, Faranguis, Jarireh, Katayun and her daughters, in order to study their roles such as advice giving, kindness, fertility, fighting with enemies, benevolence, training, etc. These are among the most important functions for mother goddesses and the woman archetype.

Due to the tactfulness of such kings and queens as Boragh Hajeb, King Roknodin, Esmat-o-Donya …, the continuance of more than 80 years of rule of the Qara-Khitai Dynasty in Kerman (619-704 AH) set the ground for political, economic, and cultural prosperity of this land. Political sovereignty and economic prosperity spread peace and security in Kerman and led to the immigration of many scientists and men of letters to the court of Qara-Khitai dynasty. The results of the present study indicate that the attempts of Qara-Khitai rulers to settle peace, security, and prosperity of the people on the one hand, and their love of Persian language and even the composition of poems in Persian by some of them on the other played an important role in the elevation of Persian language and poetry in their court to the extent that poets such as Emami Heravi, Emad Lor, and Majd Hamgar left their homeland for the Qara-Khitai court.

The great prophet of Islam has always been portrayed uniquely and in an elevated manner. There has always been an attempt to express his nobility and mental and moral magnificence with the help of historical-religious narratives. Along with the historical image of the Prophet which deals with his actual life, there are some baseless, untrue, and non-historical materials in literary texts that seem to be more in line with the mystical subject of “Haghighat-e Mohammadiyeh” (Truth of Mohammad)”.
Haghighat-e Mohammadieh which, in fact, points to the first light, was applied to the Prophet in a specific period. The process formed a series of arguments regarding his character; issues such as the first creature, the medium of God’s grace, the aim of creation, etc. which, in this study, are called the mystical portrays of the Prophet and are contrasted with his historical and real image.

Internal approaches and methods of profound contemplation towards holy texts and principles of worship are outstanding criteria for mystical thoughts. This, however, does not mean to ignore the outward manifestations of religion and of Sharia orders.
This claim is analyzable regarding the views and trainings of the mystics in the realms of one of Islamic principles i.e. prayers. In mystical teachings, along with explaining Tarighat, one can observe attending to the external aspects of Sharia as being in line with Islamic thoughts presented in Quran and Sunnah in a way that it entails the fact that such explanations are the interpretation of mentioned resources.
The present study deals with three important issues: the status of prayers, the consequences and blessing of prayers, and the aftermaths of disregarding prayers. First, Sharia has been thoroughly investigated based on Quranic and Sunnah resources, then, with regard to mystical poetic and prose literature, correspondent mystics’ speeches have been quoted. The adaptability of Islamic instructions with mystical learning has been evaluated and judged afterwards.

Basically, one of the pivots of thought for thinkers, mystics, and philosophers is the recognition of man’s nature. Most religions, especially Islam, emphasize the recognition of this masterpiece of creation to gain knowledge of God. Among the most important subjects recommended for knowing man is to consider the relations, rights, and responsibilities of each man toward others.
The great thinker of the 5th century AH, Abou Hamed Imam Mohammad Ghazali, in his precious writings has used this subject, because he also believes that man will come to know God through knowing himself. In this study, through examining Ghazali’s three significant works, i.e. Kimiyay-e Sa’adat, Nasihat-ol-Molouk, and Ehya-e Oloum-al-Din, his ideas and theories regarding the rights and relations of human beings have been extracted and analyzed. With regard to his careful and scientific insight, it is advisable to practice his ideas as ethical models for social human behavior.

Constructivist sociology is one of the contemporary literary criticism approaches that focus on the reflection of the social structures in the literary works. According to constructivist Louis Althusser, the process of maintaining power in pre-modern era was applied by suppressive apparatuses; and in the modern era it is fulfilled through ideological apparatus as education (especially at schools). This study examines the performance of ideological apparatus of school in “The Smile of Pomegranate", a story by Houshang Moradi Kermani which portrays the two discourses of traditional and modern educational system. Belief in the desirability of violent attitude as an efficient means of education appears as an ideology in the traditional discourse of education in this story, and the suppressive method transforms into a modern ideological method in its modern layers. By examining the type and the function of elements related to these traditional and modern discourses, in the Althusserian view, the process is identified as the changing process of maintaining power in pre-modern and modern periods.

As a subset of continuity, the scene is taken into consideration in evaluation of narrative time of a work. The main point regarding scene is how the playwright puts an end to mediation of narrative tools while reporting his story, so that the events of story take place in front of the audience’s eyes in such a way that, the audience feels no barriers between himself and the events, and finds himself involved in and as the direct observer of the events. Since the story “Gila-Mard” is always introduced as a dramatic work, the present study tries to consider dramatic factors of this story. Most theorists regard direct reports of “dialog” as the only dramatic tool of the story; thus, this study illustrates how Bozorg Alavi was able to create such a dramatic story through a comprehensive description of the story and attending the details, offering animated descriptions of nature, employing progressive verb tenses in descriptions, and blurring the existence of narrator within the story. To do this, dramatic factors of a story were explained and considered within the story “Gila-Mard”.

When the heroic and mythical parts of Šāhnāma are compared with some historical facts and eternal events, there emerges an exact and accurate correspondence. One of the subjects that has been neglected in the studies related to Šāhnāma is the examination of the correspondence between heavenly and eternal events described in book of Bundheš and the events of heroic essence; the impact of those mythical motifs on Ferdowsi and its reflection in metaphorical language of Šāhnāma have been disregarded as well. The present study establishes that the correspondence is a grand metaphor by itself which looks at the dialectic context for the emergence of metaphor. For this aim, Derrida’s dialectic theory was employed to reexamine the concept of metaphor in Šāhnāma. The results show that along with rhetorical and emotive metaphors, there are others emerging from mythological origins and representing ideas reflected in Bundheš, all of which could be remembered as referential and cultural metaphors.

According to the school of trans-historicism any system of thought likely to be compared with others, provided that they are formed around the same axis. Accordingly, this study shows that, since the central thought is that of transience, and despite the differences between Buddhism and Khayyam’s system of thought, it is likely that one can investigate his system of thought within the framework of “the noble truth” in Buddhism. Transience is the first noble truth and the truth of suffering. However, this idea is not inherently paradoxical or negative for Buddha or Khayyam; however, the suffering reveals itself when man is caught in the cycle of becoming and transience. This is the second noble truth. In both systems of thought, suffering deals with a paradox between the love of life and survival in the world and its transience. The basic solution in both systems of thought is living in the moment with perfect awareness. This is the third and fourth noble truth, though with some differences.

The poetical aspect of any poem has an inseparable bond with imaginative elements, and a major part of poetic delicacy is dependent on the way these elements are used. Therefore, evolution and alteration of these elements in the scope of Persian poetry, which has experienced several different styles, are inescapable. Discussion of the state and philosophy of these evolutions in poetic styles and the attitude of oratory researches toward these changes have been neglected in literary studies. This study attempts to, comparatively, examine the evolution of imaginative elements of Persian poetry in four poems from different styles and to introduce forms of the evolution. The results indicate that the imaginative elements of Persian poetry have not followed a single direction having been influenced by factors such as conditions of the age, poetic styles, literary theories, poetic genius, interaction of speech and written forms, and finally, tendency toward deviating from the norms. The departure point begins from Iraqi school and culminates in the poetry of Safavid era and Nimaee poetry. Throughout this process, Persian poetry has created original imaginative elements which are beyond interpretation in words.

“Figures of speech” is one of the most common expressions in literary criticism and it is among those expressions most frequently defined. Exploring poetic figures of speech is one of the ways to distinguish the similarities and differences of literary works. Examining from this viewpoint eventually highlights the style, the artistic value, the power, innovation and the use of past heritage. Through their subtlety, Bidel and other poets of the Hindi school looked closely at their surrounding elements and phenomena, and sought for novel meanings just to leave numerous innovations in all kinds of figures of speech. These innovations have innate properties so that Nima has used them in his innovations as well. This study firstly defines figure of speech, examines the four figures of metaphor, simile, irony, and imagery, studies them in the poetry of the above mentioned poets, and finally compares the two styles in the form of diagrams.

“Homay-o-Humayun” by Khajou Kermani is an 8th century AH collection of stories relating the demanding journey undertaken by Homay, the Syrian prince, to reach his beloved, Homayoun, the Chinese princes. Based on the model of Vladimir Prop, this study intends to find the characters of the story and their functions and also to investigate the mythological sub-structures within the structure of the story. Previous studies solely regard the narrative aspect of the story and do not deal with the mythological aspect. The structure of the poem consists of six characters and eleven functions. The story ends with the success of the hero. This story, in some ways, has a mythical structure which has been extracted using mythological sources. One can look for the origin of some of these patterns in Iranian myths, and some others can be traced back in the mythology of other nations. The basic structure of the story takes form on defamiliarization.

In Autosegmental phonology introduced by Goldsmith as an independent field of generative phonology, phonological representations are made up of different layers. In this approach, each feature or group of features that make a phonological contribution in a language is situated on independent tiers. In Autosegmental phonology, features are independent and have their own existence. The purpose of the present study is to introduce, analyze and describe the phonological processes of consonants in Farimani dialect on the basis of autosegmental phonology approach. The author seeks to assess the effectiveness of this approach on the analysis and justification of phonological processes of consonants in this dialect. Hence, the phonological processes of assimilation, elition, neutralization, compensatory lengthening, lenition, and fortition were studied. The findings indicate that a detailed explanation of the process of lenition, fortition and neutralization is challenging on the basis of nonlinear approach.

Nasser Khosrow (394-481 AH), the authoritative poet-author, is one of the outstanding figures of the 5th century AH. He considered science and knowledge as the highest levels, and valued them greatly. His scientific approach accompanied by his pragmatism can be a perfect model for any human being. One of the instructional methods used by Nasser Khosrow is inquiring or asking questions through different methods. He had the knowledge of various sciences of his age such as philosophy, religion, etc. and he used each of these sciences for expressing his ideas. His questions are posed among his odes, but the answers to these questions are presented through different methods. Sometimes, one should look for the answers to these questions in his prose works. At times, he uses rhetorical questions as an alert for the audience, at other times he may ask a question in his ode and provide the answer somewhere in the same ode. On the whole, Nasser Khosrow uses all rhetorical methods in his works to impress his audience. This study classifies these questions based on their content, investigates his purposes, and determines the methods of answering the questions in order to illustrate his way of thinking. Examples have been extracted from some of his works including his Divan, Zaad-ol-Mosaferin, Safarnameh (Travelog), Goshyesh va Rahayesh, Jaame-ol-Hekmatein, Vajh-e Din, and Khan-ol-Ekhvan.