A Comparative Study of Metrical Patterns of Contemporary Ghazals and Khanlari's Pattern of Persian Ghazal Meter

One of the main aspects of the development of contemporary Ghazal is the relative change in the prosodic circle and introducing new meters. However, researches are only focused on studying the new metrical patterns of some poets, and metrical patterns of contemporary Ghazal have not been analyzed. Adapting an analytic-comparative method, in this research, the meters of more than 2500 Ghazals of 10 prominent contemporary poets have been identified and then these meters have been compared with Khanlari’s pattern of Persian Ghazal meters. Moreover, poets’ tendencies regarding following the traditional metrical patterns and their innovations in employing new meters have been analyzed and compared. The results show that 13 among 20 major meters, proposed in Khanlari's pattern, are still considered the main Ghazal meters, and other meters are added to this pattern; however, the frequency of composing Ghazals based on Khanlari's pattern, is in general 15% less than the average in Persian Ghazals. In contemporary Ghazal, the frequency of the short meters is decreased, while the frequency of the medium, long and overlong meters are increased; however, medium meters are the most frequent in contemporary Ghazal. Among the contemporary poets, Behbahani and Monzavi are the most innovative and ingenious in employing Ghazal meters. Aref Qazvini, Rahi Mo'ayyeri, Shahriar and Mardani have shown the highest conformity with the traditional prosody while poets like Mohammad Ali Bahmani, Emad Khorasani, Farrokhi Yazdi and Ebtehaj are somewhere between the innovation and tradition.