فصلنامه متن پژوهی ادبی
پیاپی 45 (پاییز 1389)

Irony is a literary term that contemporary translators have attempted to translate as satire, sarcasm, caustic remark, innuendo, and ridicule in Persian; however, this paper will represent that each of these words will convey only one aspect of this concept. This study is aimed at explaining the differences between Irony, satire, sarcasm, and similar rhetorical devices. Satire is a literary genre similar to such literary genres as facetiousness, ridicule or lampoon, comedy, and humor. Therefore, to give an understanding of the term “satire”, such literary genres have been briefly defined along with an explanation of the basic difference between irony and satire. Afterwards, irony and its various types have been represented and in order to recognize the difference between this literary term and similar figurative and rhetorical terms, Persian literary devices have been consulted to explain how irony differs from them in terms of meaning. This will lead the readers to acquire a good knowledge of irony, because a term or concept will be understood well if and only if it is explained in parallel with its similar concepts with their differences being appropriately clarified. It should be noted that regarding the explanations proposed in this study about the term “irony”, the writer is not going to translate it into such words as satire, sarcasm and any other words implying these two concepts.

Mahmood Dowlatabadi is one of the impressive Iranian novelists, especially in the area of climatic literature. "The empty place of Salouch" is his first novel. This novel deserves an extensive investigation in different aspects such as linguistic and literary features, sociological and anthropological studies, and narratology. In the present study, the speed of narration in the novel of "The empty place of Salouch" (through using Jerar Janet’s narratological theory) and the factors which have had a great influence on that have been investigated. The narrative speed and rhythm are one of the most significant components in narration, also one of the most important elements in the form of the plot. The concept of narrative speed reveals how long it has taken for the actions and events to take place in a literary work and regarding this time juncture how much of the book is devoted to them. In most parts of "The empty place of Salouch", the speed is negative, and the narrative speed is slow; but the narrative speed in the whole novel (the main narration) is average since the narrative speed’s increasing and reducing components in this novel are used in a balanced manner, and this feature has caused the adjustment of speed in the whole novel. In fact, the novelist has used certain strategies to increase the motion and to compensate for the lack of motion and the low speed of narration in some parts of the novel. Therefore, this novel, in spite of its low narrative speed, is full of motion, excitement, dynamism and movement, fright and apprehension, and internal and external conflicts. In other words, this novel has a low rhythm and fast dynamism. Hence, this study is an attempt to examine the strategies that the novelist has deployed to increase the motion and dynamism of the narration besides the narrative speed and the factors influencing on that.

Teaching Persian to speakers of other languages has failed to keep abreast of the trends in language teaching. This non-convergence is rooted in political, economic, cultural, and linguistic issues (particularly alphabetical) as well as literary and linguistic perceptions of teaching Persian as a second or foreign language. As a result, one decade of theoretical and pedagogical developments in language teaching has not informed the teaching of Persian. This problem can be investigated from three perspectives. The first one is the relationship between teaching Persian and the emergence of methods and postmethod eras in language teaching. The second perspective concerns the emergence of different syllabi and their employment in Persian course books. The third perspective sheds light on teaching Persian in terms of teaching techniques and activities utilized in Persian course books and classes. The results of the investigation show that there is no single approach or method applied to the selection of activities in Persian course books. In addition, they show the cognitive, affective, and metacognitive variables of learners are not taken into account in the development of materials. Against this backdrop, the paper offers some suggestions to enhance Persian syllabus design and materials development.

The story of the “king and little servant” reflects all fictional narratives of Masnavi, a narrative which manifests the memory of human race (archetype) representing love symbol in Mevlana’s collective unconscious. The symbol of love in the story of the “king and little servant” is a force which signifies self-awareness i.e. perception and understanding of primary forms and phases, so that Mevlana, using this symbol, reaches individuality. This study is an attempt to analyze the archetypal symbols of the story of the “king and little servant”, inherited from the collective memory of mankind and come into Mevlana’s unconscious, by reviewing the elements of yung’s analytical psychology. The results of this study reveal that the archetype of love along with the archetypal symbols of self, shadow, veil, the old wise man, and the individual and collective unconscious in connection with sleep and dream, transfer the king from the state of consciousness to unconsciousness, and the king, in conflict with his inside, encountering the conscious and unconscious state in the process of acquiring individuality, is reborn and according to Mevlana “is born a second time”.

Anthropology as a subset of the science of sociology investigates human groups in two forms of cultural and natural anthropology. Regarding this fact that some literary works contain existential, cultural, and social human dimensions, they can be used as valuable documents in anthropological studies. The findings of the present research show that Mohammad Hossein Behjat Tabrizi (nicknamed Shahriar) reflects two types of anthropology in his Persian poetry works by dealing with different aspects of physical, behavioral, moral, and cultural levels of human groups in regional and global dimensions. At the regional dimension, Shahriar deals with cultural anthropology, the comparison of behavioral patterns, life styles, and the relationship between "man with man" and "human with nature" in rural (Gemeinschaft) and urban (Gesellschaft) communities. In his view, the level of behavioral and cultural patterns in rural communities is higher than urban communities. On the other hand, Shahriar’s global dimension deals with expressing the physical and bioenvironmental attributes and the positive cultural patterns of Turkish and former Soviet countries’ people. Comparing them with Iranians, Shahriar refers to the decline of cultural and behavioral patterns among the Iranians. Shahriar has attempted to improve the social and cultural patterns of his community by stimulating the awareness and nationalistic feelings of Iranians.

Surveying the structure of NP in Persian, this study tries to show that most of NP constituents are either independent of each other or they are dependent to Determiner Phrase (=DP). The researcher follows a uniform minimal analysis to illustrate the structural position of relevant constituents of DP, including Possessive Phrase, Prepositional Phrase and Quantifier Phrase, under the tree diagram. The most important point of this study is the claim that NP is mostly one of the dependents of DP. Hence, the final section of the study deals with and analyzes the structure of DP in Persian. The DP analysis undertaken in this study has some advantages. It can explain the internal relevance of all DP constituents and provides them all with a uniform analysis. Likewise, the semantic importance of Persian genitive marker and its role in parsing are borne out.

Surrealism is a literary school which was established in the 20th century by the French writer Andre Breton and its influence was drawn to the other countries. This school has come into existence by taking advantage of Freud’s scientific theories in psychology, Yung’s theories in mythology, Heggel and Henry Bergson’s philosophic and literary theories, and many other authors in literature. According to Surrealism, a literary work must arise from unconscious mentality of his creator. In Surrealistic works, besides using unconscious mentality, imagination and dream, automatism, simultaneity, magic and astonishment, myths and symbols, attention to comedy, and aspatial and atemporal events and incidents, are among the important characteristics. Nezami in his poetic work “Haft Peykar”, by unconscious use of Surrealistic techniques, such as imagination and dream, use of symbols and unconscious mentality, magic and astonishment, simultaneity, and aspatial and atemporal events and incidents, has created a work that contains all the elements of Surrealism and saliently reveals them almost in all the stories of “Haft Gonbad”.