Rhetorical Criticism of the Constitutional Poetry with Emphasis on the Poems of Mirzadeh Eshqi and Abulqasim Lahouti

One way to know the literature of a period is throughout accurate assessment and critical analysis of literary works based on the available realities therein. Persian constitutional poetry as an interface between traditional and modern poetry deserves attention in many aspects. This article aims to review the rhetorical criticism of the constitutional poetry with emphasis on the poems of Mirzadeh Eshqi and Abulqasim Lahouti as two outstanding poets in that era. Contrary to commonly held views, the rhetorical critique is not restricted to the arguments of rhetoric, but rather scholars believe that it should also involve the analysis of stylistic devices or figurative language. Therefore, in this article it was attempted to review some figures of speech such as simile, metaphor, and metonymy as well as the influential stylistic devices used by the two above mentioned poets. Then, those stylistic devices were classified according to the philosophy of their formation and some aesthetic criteria which are often neglected. Literary trope was not analyzed in this paper as imagination is not concerned with making that and synecdoche is not produced by a poet. The result of this study contributed to achieve a better understanding of the two above poets, and it also revealed that despite cliché tendencies of the constitutional poetry, the poets in that era neither abandoned rhetorical devices nor considered them as merely ornamental; but rather, they made use of them to express occurring challenges and problems in society in order to influence their audience and encourage them to bring transformation in community.