پژوهشنامه نقد ادب عربی
سال دوم شماره 3 (پاییز و زمستان 1390)

Words’ forms and meanings change over time for different reasons such as the needs of people, death, birth and so on. Ignoring these changes when translating old texts can have detrimental effects. In the thirty-first letter of the Nahjolbalagha, the word " قهرمانۀ " in the phrase " المرأة ریحانۀ و لیست بقهرمانۀ ", is subject to the same changes. The word ghahraman is the arabicized form of the Persian word Kahraman (majordomo). Apparently, this word is one of the governmental idioms that entered the Arabic language in the early years of Arab rule and has preserved the original meaning in this language and also in Nahjolbalagha. But the meaning of this word in Persian has changed, and today this word means the hero, brave, and strong; equal to Batal in Arabic and hero in English. The present article attempts to find the roots of this word from Persian and Arabic dictionaries and ancient texts in both languages, and examines this word is used in Hadith and other contemporary Arabic and Persian books. It also tries to explain the process of semantic change of this word in these two languages. The uses of this word in texts show that majordomos have been a special class with characteristics and specific duties and had an effective role in the environment and their time. Presence and functioning of the famous majordomos in history makes this fact clear. The study and review of Persian and Arabic commentaries and translations of Nahjolbalagha, especially those that get the word Ghahraman as champion, is another important topic in this article. Arabic commentaries and translations of Nahjolbalagha have written the correct meaning of this word but in Persian commentaries and translations, some translators have not mentioned the correct and old meaning of this word and have noted just its modern meaning.

The History of literature is not a limited, closed circle to and from which one cannot add or remove anything. Every now and then, with the growth of human society and the appearance of new insights and horizons and novel information, the history undergoes changes and the old beliefs are revised. Therefore, all approaches to the study of history of literature meet changes, reforms and, sometime eliminations. But for each approach which is, in a certain period of time, used to study the history of literature, it is important to resolve all the problems of its time. The investigation of the history of literature comes necessarily with a kind of periodization which limits one’s views. It can be argued that it is better than having no view at all. Categorizing and naming the past makes the explanation of the history clearer and its analysis more transparent. Pointing at the patterns of periodizing of history of literature, the article in hand also analyzes the theory of academic or the political periodization of history of Arab literature. First, the characteristics of this theory and the initial uses of it in Arab literature, and also the names of all written works in history of literature which have used this theory in periodization, are mentioned. Then, its bases are criticized comprehensively. Throughout this analysis, the researcher refers to some other appropriate theories to replace or to reform the academic theory.

"The School of Divan” begins one of the literary movements of the contemporary era. It has had an important role in the improvement and change of the Arabic worlds’ attitudes towards literary criticism. The study of the critical views of the founders of this school shows a modern, audacious look which, while keeping the great Arabic heritage in literary criticism, is trying to restructure it and combine it with the global achievements in this field. In this study, several main methods of literary criticism are compared with the critical views of “Ebrahim Abdolghader Almazani". Redundancy, repetition, exaggeration, corruption of the meaning, and plagiarism are some topics which have been taken into account in Mazani’s criticisms of earlier and contemporary poets and writers. Although the critical views of Mazani are often corresponding to”perfect criticism”, some critical methods are more noticeable in some of his works. In criticizing the works of Mostafa Lotfi Manfaloti, Abdolrahman Shokri, and Hafez Ebrahim, Mazani tends to put forward technical lexical criticism and historical criticism. However his critisism in investigating and criticizing the poems of Bashar Ebn Bord and Ebn Alroomi is basically psychological, as he desires to consider the psychological aspects of these two poets.

Dystopia, or ruined city, is a model of the formation of an unpleasent territory whose residents try to access a different kind of utopia and it is originates from the failure of the intellectuls and the founders of the utopia to give existence to this imaginary place which paved the way for the appearance of an opposite thought against their aspiration. By considering the scarcity of the conducted research on Khalil Havi’s poetry, and especially the alienatiation of this philosopher poet as the most prominent of planners of dystopia pattern in Arabic contemporary literature, this research attempts to answer two fundamental questions by reviewing Havi’s poetry from dystopia literature point of view, and surveying poetic thoughts in relation to the contemporary era:1-what are the main features of dystopia space and thought in poets’s language, cognition, and poetry? 2- what approaches are shown in Havi’s final images of dystopia in the contemporary era? This article, reviewing the concept of dystopia and its forming path, considers the elements and constituting componants of dystopia domain in Havi’s poems. These components include stagnant time, the intervention of time in place, the dominance of evil and corruption in the world, and the reflection of the poet’s whispering about the disappearance of the traditional chastity of man. The final result of the present study shows that the aim of Havi for dystopia review and design is to invite man to a humanistic vision and a paramaterialistic approach in the contemporary world.

Syntax is considered the foundation of the Arabian literature. This field has had a difficult journey and suffered many ups and downs in its evolution and was in the form of the syntactic theories of “Khalil Ben Ahmad” and his student “Syboye” until the first voice protest by “Ebne Moza Ghortabi” from Spain. He rejected some of the syntactic bases like elements, and explained the reasons in his own book “Alraddo Alalnaha”. Although this book did not attract attention at first, in the past few decades, figures like “Ebrahim Moustafa”, “Shoughi Zeif”, and “Mahdi Makhzoumi” have entered the fray by presenting new theories. They reject some of the most complicated syntactic concepts of Arabic, like occupation, struggle, and defective verbs, etc., to make this language easier to learn. “Ebrahim Moustafa” taught as the professor of syntax in the universities of “AlAzhar”, “Cairo” and “Alexandria”, and also in the Academy of the Arabic Language and Literature in Egypt. He tried to indicate, without bias, some syntactic topics based on the nature of the language in his own book “Ehya Al Nahv”. He believes that the old syntax tellers were under the effect of the philosophic reasons in indicating the syntactic topics.“Ebrahim Moustafa” rejects the syntactic theory which is based on the effect of the the arabi movements, and believes that arabi movements are dependent on the meanings which the speaker tends to communicate.

The Holy Qur’an as a literary text has made use of all litarary styles. One of the most significant expressive tools is artistic illustration that has been made through simile, allegory, and metaphor. The present study delves into the main characteristics of the illustrations of this guiding book. By artistic and expressive images and illustrations, we mean those pictures that Holy Qur’an inspires through the imaginary and figurative use of words. It is also worth mentioning that part of these artistic illustrations are made by means of eloquence, that is to say simile, allegory, and metaphor. The present study aims at scrutinizing some features and characteristics of similie, allegory, metaphor, and metonymy in some of the Holy Qur’an’s verses, which refer to the those who deny the book’s divinity. In this regard, we demonstrate the capabilities of the Holy Qur’an in utilizing artistic images and its distinction from other literary texts.

The history of literature is the story of the development of literature during the course of time, and its main responsibility is to determine the period of changes in literature. To make the history of any literature comprehensible we need to divide it into periods. This division should be based on certain principles and criteria. The history of Arabic Literature is no exception.This research has examined and criticized the division and naming of periods of Arabic literature from its beginnings to the Arabic Movement. First we have presented the criteria of division; next we have criticized the division of periods of Arabic Literature among the predecessors. Finally we have divided them in a new way and named them based on a new approach.The findings show that: Arabic literature, which with the emergence of Islam was liberated from tribal conflicts, in the time of the Umayyad dynasty was at the service of various groups. In early second century, with the infusion of Iranian culture and civilization, it reached its peak. Finally with the Mongol conquests, the dispersion of the Islamic World, rise of independent Iranian kingdoms, and the Turkish invasions, Arabic literature went into decline and did not revive until the Arabic Movement.