Hypertextual Damage in Contemporary Ritual Ghazal

Persian ghazal that once only focused on romantic conversation proper found new horizons after expanding its subject matter and theme. However, at the same time, it caused serious damage to its form and coherence. The purpose of this paper is to study the ritual ghazal of contemporary Iran in terms of both text and hypertext. The fundamental issue of the paper is the challenges that have weakened today’s ritual ghazal, looking for the origin of these challenges at the hypertext that has influenced this poetic form. The method of the present study is argumentative and inductive. The main corpus of the paper is the ghazal poems published in the collection of contemporary poets. A critical examination is done of today’s ritual ghazal and its main problems, and it is concluded that in today’s poetry in general and ritual ghazal in particular, although thematic and especially ideological approaches have been extended, very serious damage has been done, which has negatively influenced the persuasion of general and intended audience. More importantly, the impact of hypertext damage is so considerable and far-reaching that disturbs the text of many of today’s ritual ghazals, and the root of many of the text’s weaknesses must be traced to its hypertext.