نشریه تفسیر و تحلیل متون زبان و ادبیات فارسی (دهخدا)
پیاپی 30 (زمستان 1395)

In ancient literary texts some great characters commit such a sin that downgrades their status or leads them to an early grave; though their importance is sustained. This is a contradiction which has come together based on an archetype concerning the Creation. The Creator has first created a human being (a prototype) who is doomed to be killed by Ahriman, the evil. Then, out of his decomposition, other human beings begin to exist. This myth has transformed in the eras of pervasive logic and reasoning: the death of man occurs either as his expulsion from the paradise or his degeneration of status. And this should be the result of committing a sin. This sin, indispensable for the creation of man, has been thoroughly discussed in religious texts, and deserves retribution in the world to come. This paper tries to find a common ground among different and even contradicting ideas based on the deep structure of the Creation myth.

Sāeb Tabrizi, as a representative of a poetic style known as innovative, fresh and contriving, is one of the most prominent gazal composers in Iran, and his poetry is believed to fall in the midst of the two main streams of Indian style: the plainly unadorned style (employed by the relatively analphabetic and common poets of the genre) and the quaintly sophisticated one. Late in sixteenth century the Persian versification took a route to an enigmatic intricacy which resulted in ambiguities brought about by language manipulation and semantic deviation. It was an attempt to discover new relations and to create paradoxical images. The typical features that make together his verse ambiguous are different from those belonging to Hafez and Rumi’s versification. Ambiguity in the poems of these two is because of the span of meaning. Moreover, ambiguity in Sāeb’s verse is different from the ambiguity existing in the poems of Anwari and Ḵhāqāni who let in their verses scientific, philosophical, historical and religious comprehension. This article studies those elements – mostly aesthetic ones – which make Sāeb’s verses ambiguous. Sāeb’s intention to invoke certain ambiguity in his poems and his mastery of aesthetic applying of it are among the findings of this article

This article studies “diction” in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. Diction has different meanings and is so frequently used that amounts to the signification of “speech” as one of the bases of “thinking good thoughts, saying good words, and doing good deeds” in Shahnameh. Ferdowsi based his versification of Shahnameh on this so-called triangle to depict a clear picture of man’s life as he deserves it, i.e. a worthy life founded on this triangle. In his Shahnameh, Ferdowsi has used the term “diction” more than two thousand times, either as a single, derivative or compound word, in its literal and metaphorical senses. Then the researcher has tried to scan and study the term in all its form as used by Ferdowsi in order to discover his viewpoint of this signifier – as the sole distinction of human and animals – and its relation to the signified. Although parallel researches can reveal the significance and function of every single word in the structure of this masterpiece of Ferdowsi, the word “diction” undoubtedly matters more, for it is his only means both to narrate his Shahnameh and to express his knowledge and wisdom and his understanding and judgment. Moreover, studying “diction” in Shahnameh brings out Ferdowsi’s adroit use of the term and lets us know not only how he thought about the world but how the characters of his narratives uncover their true selves through speaking.

“Discordant Verbs”, a literary trope involving juxtaposition of opposite verbs, is employed as a verbal rhetoric device in literary works. If used artistically and accompanied by such figures of speech as parallelism and pun, this literary device can add to the impressive eloquence of the speech. However, it is not so frequently used as to be considered a typical style in writing, and is exclusive to Sa’di and Hafez. By reviewing the way language and poetry are interrelated the researcher here tries to explore and analyze the figure of speech of “discordant verbs” in the poems of Sa’di and Hafez.

Jām (cup) is one of the main themes frequently used in Persian poetry. In Persian literature there emerged a new trend under the name of “Khamriye Sorayi” (poems on wine) due to the frequently used theme of cup, and a number of well-known poets were involved in its emergence. Using the word “cup” led to forming such compounds as Jām-e Jam (cup of Jamshid), Jām-e Jahān Namā (cup of orrery) and Jām-e Jahān Bin (cup to display the world) and paved the way for the further use of this word in mystical literature. The early legends, myths and historical narratives in which the word “cup” had been mentioned could be considered the origin for the realization of the theme in later literary works. Those early narratives reveal the cup as belonged to either Jamshid or Kay khosrow. The present research is an attempt to study – through a historical review – the concept of the cup and its being the focus of interest in verse and prose literature as well as the way poets have dealt and acknowledged the theme in their works.

Co-existence and sympathy with the public is one of the most illuminated aspects of Iranian-Islamic mysticism. The outstanding mystics of Iran considered their blessedness to be dependent on the whole human beings’ health and expressed their desires and ideals needed to reach their own intended utopia through direct and indirect commentaries. Aṭṭār Nīšābūrīas one of these great mystics is a prominent figure in socio-political criticism. His couplets are replete with allegorical, caustic and dauntless criticism aimed at rulers and other groups of society. The analysis and typology of Aṭṭār’s criticism and discovering his intentions of using criticism are explored in the present research. The researchers believe that the time whenAṭṭār lived had been to a large degree turbulent and disordered, and that he, in writing Moṣībat-nāma (Book of Travail), had sought to criticize the ruling class, the greedy and worldly-minded, the religious dogmatists, and the hypocrite. The researchers have referred to B. F. Skinner’s hermeneutic approach in order to test their assumptions.

Carnivals are public folk feasts in which social classes are inverted. Clowns become kings; fools become sages; and saints are ridiculed. Thus, relativity of all claims is demonstrated through humor. It was Mikhail Bakhtin, the great twentieth century critic, who introduced the theory of Carnivalesque, which is a subcategory of folklore and satire, into literature. With the assumption that a new reading of Hafiz based on Carnivalesque in literature is possible, in this research, the researcher seeks to identify the elements of carnival including: philosophical content, secularism, the presence of a character pretending to be mad, reaching a utopian domain and also grotesque in the poetry of Hafez. Then, using an analytic approach and after explaining Bakhtin’s theory of Carnivalesque and its four categories, the instances of the motifs in the poetry of Hafez are explored and discussed.

Sanāʾi Hadiqat-al-Haqiqa (The Garden of Truth) is a mystical and didactic book in verse conceived as a continuing discourse on a wide range of ethical and religious subjects in the form of stories, anecdotes and allegories. Brevity and simplicity is the main characteristic of the book, and this research aims, through a descriptive-analytic approach, to investigate the processing system of Hadiqat-al-Haqiqa stories, especially its short anecdotes, and to study the elements of characterization, plot, dialogues and setting in them. To do so, thirty anecdotes of Hadiqat-al-Haqiqa were selected to be investigated and analyzed. According to the obtained results Hadiqat-al-Haqiqa contains many features of minimalism such as conciseness, simple plot, abundance of dialogue, limited number of characters and episodes.