The Tradition of Epilogization in Persian Poems and its Structure and Content (until the Seventh Century)

Epilogue is one of the structural components of most Persian poems which comes at the end of many poems independently or as the continuation of the main chapters of the book. The goal of this paper is to study the content of the epilogues of Persian poems with focus on twenty-four poems written up to the seventh century. In most of the examined poems, epilogue has strong relations with the main chapters and plays an important role in understanding them. Persian poems are divided to three categories: poems without epilogues, poems with short epilogues, and poems of extensive epilogues. Of the remaining poems of Dari literature, the first poem with an epilogue is Asadi Tusi’s Garshaspname. Extensive epilogues may contain historical issues (date and the amount of time taken to write the work), introductory information (description of the work, number of lines, style, interpretation of the work etc.), social issues (preaching, condemnation, and protest), praise, prayers, and conclusion. Poets have epilogized because of reasons such as observing literary traditions, the need of the text for paratext, creating a space for dealing with issues other than the main content of the work, and improving the status of their works. Some poets do not distinguish between preface and epilogue in that both parts of their works might cantain praise, didactic material, and celebration of the work.