Typology of Literary Criticism in Armaghan Magazine

With the formation and spread of the press from the middle of the Qajar period, the press devoted part of their content to literary topics, and specialized literary magazines were gradually took shape in Iran. One of the sections that literary publications included was critiques of literary texts. In line with the editors' approach, each publication focused on one or more literary genres and reviewed and critiqued the literary works accordingly. Armaghan magazine, which was published in Tehran under the management of Hassan Vahid Dastgerdi from January 1920 until February 1979, was a specialized literary magazine that was published for approximately sixty years in Iran and included various articles on literary criticism. Examining all the issues of the magazine from 1920 to 1979, the present study analyzed the types and currents of literary criticism in the magazine. The 183 articles found in the magazine were categorized into 9 major types, among which ‘comparative studies’, with 59 articles and four approaches, was the most frequent type of criticism in Armaghan magazine, which aimed to establish the position of Persian literature within the world literature. Next, ‘literary genre criticism’, with 31 articles; ‘linguistic criticism’, with 27 articles; and, ‘rhetorical criticism’, with 22 articles, were among the most frequent types of criticism in the said publication.