A Framework for Studying the Epic Language

One of the issues in modern criticism is the study of language of the literary works. The framework suggested for studying the epic language has focused on the reading of the language of epic poetry at different phonological and musical, morphological and syntactic, rhetorical and literary as well as theatrical levels in order to describe the quality of literary type of epics in language. For this purpose, through the innovative critic theories, mainly formalism, and based on the standard epic language (Shah-nameh Ferdowsi), the framework has been suggested for the study of the epic language at different levels. Subsequently, the paper is going to clarify the necessary indicators and illustrate the quality of them in the epic language by applying a number of evidences from epic texts, in particular Shah-nameh Ferdowsi, in order to access two goals: not only achieving the indicators of epic language but also examining them in the epic poetry and finding how the poems after Ferdowsi were or were not successful in the application of the epic language. According to this framework, it has been shown that Bazel Mashhadi, for instance, has not been successful in his using of the epic language. Moreover, the epic poetry as well as its created images, in some different aspects such as rhythms, composition and coherence, has a range of deficits as well.