Persian Literary Studies Journal
Volume:7 Issue: 11, Winter-Spring 2018

This article aims to discuss and analyse an overlooked play written by Dr. Majd Al-Din Mir Fakhraai (1910-1972), who was a prominent Iranian poet and writer. Having spent several years outside Iran, his works were published in various journals including Jahaan-e Nou, Armaghaan and Yaadegaar. One of Mir Fakhraai’s literary outputs, i.e. this play, appears to have been overlooked in the scholarly works of modern Persian literature. This play is written in a manuscript, which has not yet been discussed in the literature or catalogues of manuscripts. The manuscript Persian MS. 996, which is held in the John Rylands Library, contains this play, entitled Sonaat-e Dehkade ‘The Village Sonata’, which was written under the pen name Golchin Gilaani in 1947 in London. This article will demonstrate the relationship between this work of Mir Fakhraai, and his other works by analysing the content and the structure of the play within the context of its production. Through analysing its content, first it will be shown how its content is a manifestation of the (in) direct impact of war (in this case World War II) on the Iranian diaspora and second the analysis will highlight the contribution of the play to Persian literary works. The final aim of the article is to highlight the importance of exploring Persian manuscripts holdings in which voices of authors, such as Mir Fakhraai, seem to have been overlooked.

Focusing on the cultural significations and artistic capacities of naqqali, this article examines the comparative workings of this Iranian popular genre in Hossein Jamali’s Hamlet: The Retribution Affair. Being among the first in an experimental juxtaposition of naqqali and a Western play, Jamali’s production as an artistic entity reflects both cultural evolution and inadequacies of Iranian society. Since naqqali has historically played an adaptive role in Iranian literature, it is worthwhile to investigate what utilities it finds in the young director’s adoption of it as a medium to narrate Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Considering the fact that adaptive works are typically sites to express minor literature, this study is concerned to see to what extent the indigenized Hamlet deterritorializes the source text.

The necessity of taking refuge in literary productions has been intensified due to the societies’ severe involvement in the features of the modern world. Loss of identity and failure to maintain an integrated self are the repercussions of distancing from humanistic roots. Some attempts in modern art/literature appear to focus more on visual styles to represent the catastrophes of the modern universe and create the needed cultural shock. Contemporary Iranian Dramatist, Ali Rafiée, has chosen to potentialize historically originated texts by visual intensity of various types on stage to help audience develop critical thinking and rehabilitate their identities with the aid of cultural resemblances very akin to universal codes of humanity. Scrutinizing the visual techniques, one may see the footprints of Kabuki and Balinese performances, supporting the idea of the visual communicative power of stage and audience. Consequently, the significance of the study lies in salvaging the universal humanity through vision-based performances; the humanity which has been doomed to be disoriented within the disastrous modern era. Seeing through the lenses of cultural memory theories of Jan and Aleida Assman, one can consider vision-based performances as an appropriate modern means of helping the individuals to rehabilitate the lost culture and eventually to blur the geographical boundaries and highlight the transnational aspects of literature.

The present study is an attempt to investigate conversational repair phenomenon in Persian dramatic discourse and it tries to check the presence of any predominant preference for employing a specific type of repair rather than the others in the context of Persian drama. To reach the aforementioned purpose, Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks’s (1977) framework has been adopted and applied to Akbar Radi's (1989) five-act play called Pellekân (The Steps). The results of the study indicated different applications of repair in each act and the findings of Schegloff, et al. (1977) regarding this phenomenon were also recognized in the current investigation of Persian dramatic discourse. As a systematic sample of a real talk, the characters of Pellekân preferred to have self-correction as their repair strategy rather than using other-correction in their conversations and negotiations of meaning. Furthermore, a tendency toward self-repair and more specifically, other-initiated self-repair was seen through the whole play. These findings indicate that the playwright has had a tendency to portray the acts in a way quite similar to real-life context. The current findings suggest that Persian drama as a representative of an ordinary talk has a similar preference toward self-correction. It is highly recommended that the interested researchers study other Persian plays to ensure whether they are also in line with the findings of the current study.

The concept of Iranian men and masculinities has become a strong strand of research in recent years. In the paper, the researchers try to look at this concept through the views of Raewyn Connell’s theories in order to take a closer look at Azadeh Mohseni’s short story Born in the Month of Owl. Connell rejects the gender dichotomy theory and in her book Masculinities, she introduces four types of masculinities: hegemonic masculinity, complicit masculinity, marginalized masculinity, and subordinate masculinity. At any given time and place in history, human beings have different definitions for each category. The masculinity that was once hegemonic for the people of a particular society can become marginalized with the passage of time. In the first section of this study, we have defined gender from Connell’s perspective and in the second section, we have focused on different types of masculinity and how they have changed continuously in Born in the Month of Owl.