A Study on the Relationship between Farsi Local Jangname and Shahnameh: A Genre Analysis

A significant part of Persian poetry is epic, and its domain has extended to the realm of folkloric literature. Local Jangname are poems with epical features that have been specifically written to imitate Shahnameh. These poems are in the form of masnavi, motaghareb and sometimes hazaj, describing exaggerated narratives, tales and heroic stories of persons or historical individuals from a geographical area. They are preserved for a long time in the area and could be used to resolve local and tribal conflicts. Depending on their subject matter, Jangname sometimes narrates the war between tribal leaders and the feudalists (khavanin) of the region, and at times narrates the war of a group with the central government, or the battle of a group of regional people with foreign forces. The element of war and the celebration or degradation of the local and regional characters and events are the basics of these poems. The works focused in this study are Jangname of Raeesi Delavari, Jangname of Hayat Daboud and Nightshift, and Jangname of on the light of Liravi which are studied stylistically and typologically. These poems influenced by the linguistic and literary style of the Shahnameh and other epic texts, as well as their tone and dialogue, have substantial differences with the epic genre; there is no indication of aspects such as myth, fiction, heroism, national spirit, and defamiliarization in these poems. They suggest no national spirit, because their heroes often seek to achieve their personal goals and objectives. It is concluded that these poems should be called ‘quasi-epic’.