مجله زبان و ادبیات فارسی
سال دوازدهم شماره 2 (تابستان 1395)

Rivers in Shahnameh are remarkable and outstanding places that could be scrutinised because, as with heroes, they have characters, and beyond their typical properties, they also carry with them personal traits. Mythified, rivers have become enigmatic, ensuing mythical events. With their magical water, rivers have expanded upon the bounds of myths. And all these are the portrayal of an abstract, miniature river whose feature is to always flow and to sporadically flood.
In this article, amongst the rivers mentioned in Shahnameh, we only focus on the rivers where an event takes place, such as Arvand Rud, Kaseh Rud, the Euphrates, Oxus, Sanbar, Helmand, etc, so that we could bespeak Ferdowsi’s fidelity and the illustration of Shahnameh’s geographical and mythical significance.

Conceptual or perceptual metaphors are based on understanding an abstract matter with a conceptual and concrete approach or portraying subjective concepts. Mystical language has always spoken of abstract concepts and therefore to be understood better, they use interconnected conceptual metaphors which themselves are chained together. Conceptual metaphor of mirror is one of the most persistent types of conceptual metaphor in the cognitive and epistemic field which itself arose from mystical notions and has created a chain of implicit arguments. The present article is an attempt to introduce the conceptual metaphor of mirror, its historical origin, more general versions of it in the field of mystical metaphors and the implicit implications emanating from this sort of metaphor.

Mehdi Akhavan-Sales is no doubt one of the most eminent poets of the post-Nima era. His poetry, in the words of most scholars in the Iranian contemporary literature, is a poetical and artistic blend of the Persian traditional poetry and the neo-Nimaic poetry. Akhavan-Sales is the epitome of the generation of poets who are not only committed to the society and its developments but also whose poetry enjoys a unique literary enrichment. He is, indeed, a poet who both minds the literary form and attends closely to the content of his poem. Therefore, many have tried to discover and study the various aspects of Akhavan-Sales’ literature by reading his poetry over and over. Literary criticism, which is considered to be an important field of the modern literature, comprises multiple areas. One is foregrounding, which acts as one form of reading literary works. Foregrounding is the employment of language elements in a manner in which the mode of expression draws attention and is unconventional and non-automatic, rather than automatic. This definition gives a general description of the literary criticism style. In the word of the scholars, foregrounding is realised in two ways: deviation and extra-regularity. Akhavan-Sales’ poetry is replete with both deviation and extra-regularity. Deviation normally includes the levels of phonology, lexis, syntax, and semantics; extra-regularity usually deals with the novel words. In this type of foregrounding, we impose some norms on the conventional language. The reader of this article will get familiar with some of the reasons for Akhavan’s greatness and the secret of his poem’s impressiveness.

One of the psychological terms that entered the field of literature is known as “nostalgia”. Although it has recently entered art and other sciences, it is not a new thing at all. Generally speaking, no one has ever been content with the current situation of society and his life and has always felt sad and gloomy in some days. One of the many types of nostalgia is social nostalgia. This nostalgia has attracted the attention of many poets, literati and critics in literature. One of the competent poets of contemporary times whose poems comprise a lot of social nostalgia is Fereydoon Moshiri. Moshiri’s poems are indeed an exact mirror of his time’s society. This research was done in order to present a correct image of his era and the society in which he lived by explaining the components of social nostalgia and investigating his poems.

Nature, symbols, and natural symbols have prevailed amongst the early poets’ works and more or less constitute an important poetic figure of speech in the works of the contemporary poets. Shafiei too is one of the symbolist and nature-symbolist poets. In his poems, symbols serve words, content, meaning, and the society. Symbols used by Shafiei have national, domestic, religious, and natural origins, with the ones about Nature being the most prominent. Allegorical symbolism is one of the symbolic features of his poetry. He does not just describe nature but blends the description of nature with man’s feelings and thoughts and reveals them in symbolic expressions. Hence, in this study, two of his poetry collections -- A Mirror for the Voices and The Mountain Gazelle’s Second Millennium -- are scrutinized and criticized.

Despite the heavy influence that Arabic has had on Persian, Arabic too has been influenced by Persian before Islam and after it. Persian words have entered Arabic and continued their usage after they underwent changes in form and pronunciation. Since the early times when lexicography in Arabic was traditionally done by Arabic language researchers up until now, it has been a common tradition to inspect and archive these loan words. In the present research, the Arabic words, borrowed from Persian and included in Almonjed dictionary, have been collected and discussed so that you may know the whole sack by a handful.

Shahnameh is a full-scale reflection of culture, philosophy and thoughts of Iranians and the manifestation of their beliefs, rituals, and social customs that can be analyzed with different approaches. This masterpiece is the most important source of versed culture of past Iranians.
The source and basis of Shahnameh’s poetical sense is Khwaday-Namags (Samanid era history texts), memoirs, religious narrations, Avesta, Pahlavi texts and even paintings. Because of this, this famous Iranian book of poetry was influenced by beliefs and customs of these sources and these traditions are mentioned in the masterpiece of Ferdowsi either by telling the whole story or by mentioning it.
This research studies one of ancient Iranians’ customs, promising and keeping one’s promise, which is commonly included in Shahnameh, Avesta and Pahlavi texts. There has also been an emphasis on the fact that Shahnameh is the strongest document of the cultural identity of ancient Iranians and the anthology of Iranians’ past culture. Proof of this claim can be seen in the texts before Ferdowsi and contemporaneous works.