Investigation and Comparison of Ironic Aspects in Saadi's Gulistan andUbayd Zakani’s Akhlaq al-ashraf

Irony or double speaking is one of the artistic-literary techniques that, in literature, is equivalent to terms such as sarcasm, praise, contradiction, etc. In the present study, an attempt is made to examine and compare the different aspects of this literary industry in Saadi's Gulistan and Ubayd Zakani’s Akhlaq al-ashraf. In this study, firstly, a descriptive-analytical method is used to look at the political-social situation of the era of both authors; then, the analysis and comparison of ironic types in both books are discussed along with examples. According to the findings of this research, the most types of irony used in Golestan, considering the prevailing conditions of the society as well as the political and social suffocation of that time, which created the shade of humor and veiling of words in the context of the text of the book, are structural, situational, fateful, and verbal. Also, in Akhlaq al-ashraf, the most frequently-used type is rhetorical irony, and there is no special case of structural, radical, fateful, dramatic, and romantic types.