Linguistic approaches to the study of Persian Literature

Since the start of the last century, along with those literary men who took a literary approach to the study of literary texts, there has been another group who has taken a linguistic approach. The ancient and ever flourishing tradition of literary studies of translation can no doubt take benefit from linguistic methods and tools in the investigations of literary texts. As a result of this we come across linguistic terms in three high school textbooks of Persian language and literature. In fact, the separation of Persian from Persian literature and teaching it as an independent course has made it possible to teach various aspects of the Persian language. This paper briefly explores the linguistic studies of Persian literature by surveying all the theses on Persian literature with a linguistic approach presented at 31 governmental and Azad universities from 1954 to 2006. A statistical analysis of the titles of these theses clarifies the emphasis placed on linguistic approaches taken to study Persian literature.