A Reflection on Expectation Horizons in Contemporary Commentaries on the First Sonnet of Divan-e-Hafez

Many commentaries have been written on  Divan-e- Hafez which can be discussed about from different perspectives. If we can investigate these commentaries from the perspective of reception and expectation horizon (a branch of hermeneutics theory), concurrently authored with the speared of this theory, we can obviously find out a lack of support for this theory and its different equivalents. The question is that what was the expectation horizon of these commentators or commentaries? It can be said that due to the lack of a cohesive and current theory, no expectation horizon, as it should be, can be seen in this commentaries. Only in the three main commentaries, i.e. Hafeznameh, The Lost at the Seashore, and the Connection of the Sun, the mentioned horizon can be somehow approached and accessed. Expectation horizon is the perception and interpretation obtained by the commentator/reader while reading and commenting on a work which is transmitted to the audience and serves as the means for interpreting, investigating, and analyzing the work.   The statistical population and selected sample for this study is the description of the first sonnet of Divan-e-Hafez in seventeen commentaries some of which have rewritten Hafes’z poem into prose. The most prominent cases which can be interpreted as expectation horizon in commentaries of Divan-e-Hafez are: a socio-political, mystical, and blaming warrior and struggling with duplicity and false asceticism. It is worth mentioning that the method of translating and describing in some commentaries is identical or close to each other. This study’s method is a comparative, analytic and inferential one the used data collection procedures in which include evidential and documentary sources, note taking, and library methods.