فصلنامه پژوهش زبان و ادبیات فارسی
سال سیزدهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 37، تابستان 1394)

The analysis of the discourse formation of Farrah-e Izadi (divine glory) in texts belonging to different periods, with a special focus on Avesta and Shahnameh, Shows that formation of this discourse has undergone various metamorphoses. From among the vast meanings and propositions in these two works, the gift of the divine glory among Iranian kings, being divine mediators, and having a divine right to govern the people have been articulated and foregrounded as special signifiers in an interrelated and interconnected network. Other meanings of the divine glory discourse have been kept on the periphery to harmonize other properties around this central point and to reduce or block their meanings. This study shows that divine glory discourse has been formed and fixed as an obvious truth, using language strategies such as repetition of the compatible propositions, otherness, finality of its own discourse, reductionism, elimination of the rival discourse, and marginalization of lots of properties.

In the whole Persian literature history, you cannot find many poets who contradict themselves as much as Anvari does. The most obvious example of this poet’s self-contradiction is noticeable in his dual approach to mysticism. The themes of Anvari′s poems in odes, Moghattaat is different from that of Sonnets and quatrain (a poem consisting of four hemistiches, rube). The poet, who developed eulogy and satire in odes and Moghattaat, also developed a mystic appearance in sonnets and quatrain. Anvari’s numerous self-contraditions especially regarding mysticism have caused the readers of his poems not being able to make a certain and precise judgment about his character and his poems. In this article, using a descriptive-analytical approach, Anvari’s contradictory views on mysticism and the origin of this duality are investigated. It seems that, poetic period in Anvari’s time, more than any other factor, had an impact on the creation of these contradictions. Usually, in works in middle style or the style of transition period, such chaos is noticeable. These contradictions are found not only in Anvari’s poems, but also more and less in the poems of other 6th –century poets. Based on this, penetration of mystic themes in Anvari’s poems can not necessarily be considered as a proof of his tendency towards mysticism.

Reza Amirkhani is a writer with a unique style which discriminates his stories from other contemporary writers. Strange orthography, language games and proper use of various meanings and forms of the words in are some of the features of this writer’s unique style which have been studied in this article. The story elements have been analyzed in three of his novels, namely, Ermia, Man-e-Ou, and Bivatan. The results show that the appropriate use of story elements, lively and skillful description of places, characters and their feelings in a way that the reader can fully visualize the scenes of the story and imagine himself as part them, are some of the properties of Amirkhani’s writing style.

A number of contemporary Iranian writers in the pre and post Islamic Revolution period focused on explaining the western colonialism and the resistance to it as the theme in their novels. These writers tried to react to the political and cultural influences of the Western colonialism and imperialism through the effective use of myths in post colonial discourse. Simin Daneshvar, Jalal Ale Ahmad, Reza Barahani, Shahrnush Parsipur, Moniru Ravanipur, and Ghulam Hussein Saʽedi are among the post colonial writers. In this inquiry, the use of myth will be analyzed in three novels, namely, Savushun (Daneshvar,1970) Secrets of My Native Land (Reza Barahani,1982) and The Drowned (Ravanipur, 1990). The results of this study show that the use of political and cultural myths created by novelists based on Iranian ancient myths has an essential role in the formation of the postcolonial discourse and representation of colonial period in Iran’s history. The writers of these three novels succeeded in depicting their abhorrence of Iran’s occupation by western colonizers, and they could well show the invaders’ face and the Iranians’ resistance.

A moral critical approach to reading a literary text can be achieved by recognizing the moral concepts and themes in the text, or by grasping the relationship between the moral discourse of the text and its aesthetic structure. New approaches in criticism emphasize that the artistic text is based on connotations, and the meaning of the text is hidden. For this, the method of expression in literary text is of more interest than the subject. This research seeks the answer to the question that how the writer of a literary story deepens his/her own and his/her audience’s moral understanding through narrative methods. The subject of the study is GholamHossein Saedi’s works. By analyzing and reviewing the researches about this writer, several conclusions can be drawn: 1. the main semantic domains to which Saedi paid attention are political, social, and psychological. In these semantic domains, the basic theme of his works is the connection of social issues with damages to individuals as well as the immorality caused by society showing traces of Marxist morality; 2. In integrating new story writing methods with political and social ideals, Saedi formed his moral discourse by aesthetic expression and narrative devices; 3. Realism is the feature of Saedi's stories’ surface structure, and integrating this feature with symbolism in the inner structure of narrative enriches the moral or immoral aspects of events; 4. In most stories, character dominates the plot, and the effect of a sick society on the immorality of a person can be depicted by tracing the characters’ actions and reactions, and visualizing their complicated minds and souls; 5. Dramatic visualization dominates rhetorical and verbal ploys, and the negative influences of an immoral action are suggested by creating an atmosphere. At the end of this article, examples of Saedi’s moral discourse and his method of expression have been presented.

In recent decades, along with the global wave of postmodern literature, we have been witnessed novels in Persian fiction which claim to have new attitudes and a new approach to writing in this genre which naturally includes language and style. Since language is the most important element of the style in literary studies, any change in the form and content of the language in a literary work would be a sign of alteration in the artist attitude towards his/her external and internal world. So, it seems significant to analyze the influences of the postmodern literature philosophy on the language of Persian novels, since language and its associated elements and concepts have a central status in postmodern literature known by its way of using language to recreate the fictional world. The present article will analyze the linguistic patterns of Persian postmodern novels, and with a critical approach, explain different ways in which linguistic elements have been used in these novels. In order to find the linguistic arrangements that create this style, the linguistic elements ,inspired by layered stylistics, will be determined and categorized at three levels: phonetic, lexical, and syntactic. Also, linguistic characteristics of the text and their roles in reproducing the postmodern attitude or moving away from it at these three levels are described and examined in the fictional world of these novels. Investigating the language in these works reveals no distinctive stylistic properties at phonetic level; and at the lexical level, words have both literary and conversational functions. They are also grammatically cohesive.

In contemporary fiction, a new trend in story writing emerged after revolution. Its agenda was to record the religious values as human virtues. This research aims at investigating the ups and downs and changes in this trend while the diversity and multiplicity of the writers and the works have also been considered. In this research, 15 stories of three different time periods including Islamic revolution, reconstruction and reforms have been chosen and analyzed in a targeted way to illustrate all the aspects of Iranian writers’ efforts in writing religious novels. In doing so, in order to analyze the texts and explain their relation to historical, social and political contexts, methods introduced in discourse analysis have been used with a focus on narrative components. An overview of novels in these three decades shows the general trends related to the main political and social discourses. In 1980’s, some first time novelists mostly consisted of sensational revolutionary young writers published their novels. Revolution, war and the related values were the main themes in these writers’ works, and in most of their works, religious insights have been affected by the dominant political discourse. In the second period, religious novels targeted more diverse themes and audiences, and tried to communicate their insights in a more diverse and novel ways. In the third period, the writers paid more serious attention to the artistic form for reflecting the themes which match the writers’ worldviews and approaches.