Review and Comparison of Literary Genre in Three Persian Prose Works (Hossein Kord Shabestri, Darabnameh and Chaharmaghale)

The discussion of genres and the division of literary works into different categories according to their appearance or semantic aspects is one of the branches of the development of literary sciences such as stylistics and literary criticism. In terms of historical record, Aristotle and Horace were the first to classify different works, and Aristotle mentions three genres "epic, lyrical and dramatic" in his art of poetry, which of course is the "dramatic" type. It is divided into two sub-branches of "tragedy and comedy". This division in the literature of different nations takes into account the special characteristics of the works of each nation and their language and other cultural, historical and social specialities. In Persian literature, three genres are mentioned: epic, lyrical and didactic. Although in the new era, other types such as short & long stories, essays and biographies are also mentioned. One of the points of difference between Aristotle's division of genres and the division of Persian literature is that Aristotle pays attention to content and semantic criteria in his division of genres, but in Persian literature, the division of genres is based on criteria Formally and outwardly, it has been done. Nowadays, it is necessary to pay attention to literary genres in the review of literary works and it helps the researcher not to get confused in the research and the research work can be done easily. Of course, it should be noted that literary works cannot be classified under the title of a specific and absolute genre. Because every literary work always has a set of genres in it, among which, the presence is more prominent and colorful. One of them marginalizes other genres. Therefore, in examining the literary type of a work, we seek to find the most frequent genre in that work and place the mentioned literary work under the title of the same genre.The present study is an attempt to answer questions of this type: what is a literary genre? In the literary works such as "Hossein Kurd Shabstarai,  Bighami`s Darab Nameh  and Nezami`s Chahar Maghaleh ", which literary genre is and prominent? What variables should be used to determine the literary type of a work? After the definitions of the genres and literary works mentioned, the mentioned questions were answered with a library and descriptive method and at the end of the work it was determined that Hossein Kurd Shabestri has an epic genre. Beghmi's Darab Nameh has a lyrical genre and Chahar Maghaleh has a didactic genre. In order to determine the genre in the mentioned literary works, three variables of the way of presentation, the subject and content of the work, and the tone of the work have been used.