The Function of the Terms of Slaves and Bondwomen in Creating Hidden Ambiguity in Persian Literature

Ambiguity and hidden ambiguity as two figures of speech have dominated literary texts from the sixth century on. The frequency of this figure of speech in the Divans of poets such as Khaghani, Khajo, Salman Savoji and Hafez is so high that it could be considered as a main part of their literary style. More importantly, Khaghani and Hafez have utilized majority of the possible linguistic and lexical devices in favor of hidden ambiguity. Two of the good examples of these devices are the names given to slaves and bondwomen. The present article aimed at investigating the special functions of these two terms for hidden ambiguity.In doing so, the hidden ambiguities created by Khaghani and Hafez with use of these terms were classified and analyzed. With use of some pieces of evidence form Persian texts, the meanings of each of these terms were clarified and their functions in Khaghani and Hafez’s poetry were examined. It is noteworthy that most of these names, such as luck, shekel, master, dinar, hyacinth, basil, happy, ruby, fortunate, and crescent have been omitted from valid dictionaries. Therefore, the present article has substantial implications for an attempt to register these omitted meanings in modern Persian dictionaries.