Smantic Deviations in the Poetry of Hafez

The fundamental place of Language in literature as the most crucial tool to create an artistic work is an undeniable fact. In literary works, language is changed and transformed to the extent that is studied as a unique language. Besides, for centuries, the singularity of language in Hafez' Ghazals (his lyric poems) and their unique literariness have astonished readers. Many literary critics have tried, applying different literary approaches, to explicate this "singularity." In this regard, some linguistic approaches emphasize semantic deviations as the main reasons responsible for the "literariness." In this study, Hafez poems were examined and the possible types of semantic deviations were identified. The attempt was to explore the effects and significance of deviations used in Hafez poems. The findings indicated that semantic deviations are mostly of the anthropomorphic and herbomorphic type. The confirmation of the idea that semantic deviations to do with embodiment are mainly responsible for creating the literariness of the poetic language and liberating the signifiers from the rules of the normal language was the other finding of this research.