The Position of Genre of Confessions in Persian Literature (Based on A Comparison of Augustine's "Confessions" and Ghazali's "Al-Munqidh min Al-zalal")

Confessions is one of the literary genres in western literature and gustine's "Confessions" is one of the oldest and most prominent samples of it. Although, so far this type hasn’t been introduced as an independent literary genre in Persian language and literature, some researchers, it has been entitled confession-like and others regard the book of Ghazali’s Al-Munqidh min Al-Dalal similar to Augustine's Confessions, without any scientific and literary criterion. This study tries with comparison of the two books Al-Munqidh min Al-dalal and Confessions, from view of form and content, pay attention to issues such as position of confessions in Persian literature, accuracy or inaccuracy of confessional literary genre to al-Munqidh and the reason of their similarity. To fulfill these objectives, first, the structure and content of these two works have been studied with descriptive - comparative method, then an analytical- criticism method has been employed to resolve the second problem. The result is, its literary genre, based on three main component of structure of Augustine’s Confessions (fictional form, to confess sins and pray), Al-Munqidh is wholly different from Augustine's confessions and putting it in literary genre of confession is false. But since these two have similarities from the point of view of content, they can be put in a literary genre - certainly not in the literary genre of confession, but in genre of education - critical especially critique of ideas.