فصلنامه پژوهش زبان و ادبیات فارسی
سال سیزدهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 36، بهار 1394)

Mythologists have adopted various approaches to the study of myth. But, archaeological approach to myth is unprecedented. There were some attempts like that of euhemerists to degrade the mythical gods, suggesting that they are real personages (humans) by desanctifying them. Though, none of these attempts were based upon archeology which can be considered a new science, and also is deeply different from what has been done in this research. This paper aims at analyzing the mythical character of Kiumarth according to archeology. The surprising result of this research is as follows: Kiumarth era matches Mesolithic period and Kiumarth man matches Neanderthal man and his culture matches Mousterian culture, and the climate at his era matches the last glacial climate. Methods used in this research are derived from archeology (stratigraphy and typology). This study can be a starting point for exploring myths from an archeological perspective.

Irony is a figure of speech which refers to the expression of the meaning by using a language which signifies the opposite. Irony is used to express a prominent meaning and to signify a special signified, and it results in highlighting a specific part of the discourse. This figure of speech expresses the meaning implicitly through satire, metonymy, praising and blaming and contributes to the rhetoricity of the text. This research using a descriptive analytic approach aims at explaining the status of irony in Bayazid Bastami's Shathiyat. Bayazid Bastami has controversial Shathiyat rooted in mysticism and ascetisim accompanied by love. In this article, the concepts of irony, satire, and surrealism aspects are defined at first. Then, Shathiyat will be represented in their structural framework. By reflecting on the language in Shathiyat and their symmetries we can understand that wisdom or knowledge is related to surrealism too. Finally, surreal and paradoxical Shathiyat will be illustrated and explained within the principles of Sufism and mysticism.

Asceticism, like other cultural phenomena, because of the special level it attained in Islamic Sufism has a great tendency to deviate from its primary origin and roll towards different kinds of damages. Muslim ascetics, themselves, were the first serious critics in the domain of asceticism pathology, and have identified and fixed the damage from different angles. General account of this subject reveals that damages like falling into traps of arrogance, pride, an unfaithful and tradesman- like attitude towards ascetic efforts and using hypocrisy to gain public acceptance, have been noticed by the prominent characters of this domain since the first centuries of spreading Islamic asceticism and Sufism, and it has even been accelerated as the damages expanded more. This critical intra- discoursal view which is a prominent part of the Sufi literature has been much more successful in refining the Islamic asceticism. This article tends to display the unique and special role of pathological intra-discoursal view by refining it.

Language and discourse are the two important elements of life that sometimes generate other elements. One of these elements is the category of “power” which itself is the cause of the creation of other processes like “threat”, “resistance”, “blame”, and “terror”. Molana Jalal Adin Mohammad Balkhi, the great poet of seventh century (AH), has been able to state the cultural, political and ideological discourses of that time in an artistic and implicit way through the characters of Masnavi stories. The main goal and domain of this research is to analyze one of the stories in Masnavi from the recent historicism point of view to shed light on its features and functions within the new definition that Michel Foucault, the French philosopher, has proposed. The discourses discussed in this research indicate the plurality of power in texts of the stories under study, and consequently in Molavi’s era. Language as a power tool is considered to be a power factor in the relationship between story characters and the society. Believe in superstition and encouraging it is considered to be the main discourse and the main code in “The Guest- Killing Mosque”. According to the discourse under studied, Molavi lives in a society which is covered by the dust of darkness. This mysterious fable reveals Molavi’s concern for such atmosphere.

Undountedly different nations owe their educational doctrines to their intellectual characters. In order to understand the educational doctrine in Iran and other countries that is close or similar to Iran, studying Saadi’s and Tagor’s thoughts considered to be reasonable and significant. This research aims at dealing with this fundamental question that “what are the similarities and differences between the lyrical themes in Saadi’s works and Tagor’s poems?” Undoubtedly, the effect of cultural, climate, scientific, political and social factors has important role in forming these ideas, and is the reason of the similarities and differences in fundamental themes like paying attention to the nature of education, the value of life, death, aging, word, and etc. However, each one of these poets sometimes has his own ideas regarding a specific subject which is quite the opposite or independent of the other. In this article, the ups and downs of these poets’ ideas and their concordance and independence will be studied.

Persian literature and especially mystical literature, is largely mixed with illuminationist thoughts of Sohrevardi (Suhrawardi). This blending and the resulted effect are mainly due to his mysterious works in which he expressed his philosophical ideas in a literary language. In his works, the religious experiences are expressed in different ways: sometimes directly, sometimes in the form of mysterious stories, and sometimes he classifies and systematizes these experiences as an external observer. Hafez as a poet, who has always been connected to the previous literary heritage, sometimes communicates such unique experiences through sonnet which considered being significantly similar to Sohrevardi’s experiences. Facing a holy idea which is indefinable and formless in nature, this is the experiencer’s mind which forms the experience in this process. It can be claimed that Sohrevardi’s works played a role in forming the structure of Hafez’s mind. Sometimes these experiences are similar regarding the location of the events which is Sohrevardi’s “world of ideas” or “hovargheliya”, and sometimes the similarity is in the quality of the experience manifested in the form of visual, auditory and olfactory experiences. The description of experiences as a fleeting lightning or midnight son, meeting the sacred witness (Shahid) and the holy Pir (leader) are some of the common features in Hafez and Sohrevardi’s works.

Comparative studies in folk literature and children’s literature can pave the way for the growth of human lofty thoughts through explaining the ideological and cultural similarities among the people of the world. In this research, using Propp’s morphology theory, the author explains and analyzes the structure of an Iranian tale “MahPishani”, a Chinese one “Yeh-Shen”, and “Cinderella” as a Western tale. Since the tales studied in this research are from the fairy tale category, it is quite consistent with the Prop’s morphology model which is the result of Russian fairy tales analysis. After matching the structural similarities of the three tales, the author proposes a proto structure (mother structure) which is derived from the common functions of the three tales upon which their plots are based. In order to find out which tale is the most ancient one, a meta- structural analysis was inevitable. The analysis reveals that the very well-known archetype in MahPishani goes back to Paleolithic Age (Hunting Age). Eventually, the author deduced that the structural changes in these three tales follow a descending pattern, i.e. “Mahpishani” is the oldest narration, and over time, the diversity of characters and the number of functions have been decreased to the extent that the morphological diagram of Cindrella tale is the same as the mother diagram derived from the comparison of these three tales.