Investigating the Effect of Morphological Features of Persian and Arabic Nouns on the Literariness of Poetic Texts: The Case of Hafez’s Molamma’āt

The present article identified the morphological characteristics of the Arabic noun as a feature preventing various interpretations of literary texts. Arabic nouns enjoy intrinsic features such as masculinity and femininity, solidness or derivativeness, morphological weight, duality, plurality, precise pronouns, relativity, demonstratives, etc., which determine and give rise to special associations in the mind of the audience. Although the precision of Arabic morphology in scientific and philosophical prose is a privilege with the help of which scholars can clearly express their intentions, it seems to be a defect in literary texts that reduces the multifariousness and artistic delicacy of the works. The absence of some of these features in the morphology of Persian nouns contributes to the ambiguity and literariness of the poem. In Hafez’s Diwān, there are seven bilingual lyrics (Molamma’āt) that allow such a comparison. The presence of some Persian and Arabic stanzas in a ghazal lyric of Hafez clearly shows the difference between the morphological possibilities in Persian and Arabic. In general, the absence or existence of such features in Persian words brings with it a wider audience and expands the range of different interpretations of a poetic work.