Conceptual metaphor and the destiny of four Quatrains attributed to Khayyam

Conceptual metaphor is a window in to the metaphorical worldview of the writer. Accordingly, the focus of a metaphorical mapping in the mind, leads to the development of the individual mentality and the creation of analogous metaphors and finally to the originality of the individual style. Because of the ambiguity in the assignment of some Quatrains to Khayyam, this research aims to identify the authenticity of the Quatrains which are assigned to him by Mohammad Ali Foroughi and Qassem Qani .The results indicate that in a total of 178 quatrains of this book, there are 15 basic conceptual metaphors. Comparing the conceptual metaphors in 66 original quatrains and 112 quatrains attributed to him , it is shown that the metaphors: journey, secret, container, opportunity, transformation and structure, in both groups are the most frequent ; so that 58 Quatrains of the 66 original quatrains and 101 quatrains out of 112 attributed quatrains follow the central mapping of these metaphors. Also many of these quatrains contain 2,3 or even 5 of the above mentioned metaphors ; this leads to the connection of these metaphors and consequnetly the originality of the style .Among these 112 quatrains, 4 are not included in these metaphors subcategory and assigning them to Khayyam doesn’t seem true. Comparing the theme of these 4 quatrains with the Omar Khayyam’s System of thought and his metaphorical thinking and also looking them up in the other resources confirms this view.