فصلنامه نقد ادبی
پیاپی 51 (پاییز 1399)

The stylistics deals with studying repetitions, and so employing the statistical analyses in stylistic evaluations proved to be useful in studying the frequencies. Whereas the descriptive statistics cannot always explain the stylistic fluctuations, using inferential statistics theories in evaluating stylistic phenomena will bear a scientific accuracy. “Stylometry” is the term that has been coined for studying stylistics with the use of computer.  In the present article, the author tried to evaluate imagination in the construction of simile in Khorasani style. In doing so, the books of twelve eminent poets of Khorasani style were studied diachronically and the relation of literal similes and imagination was examined. To analyze the data, the author adapted an inferential approach and calculated the Pearson Correlation Coefficient. The results showed that the correlation coefficient was 0 /374 and the significance level was 0/626 and therefore it could be said that there is a positive and direct relationship between variables. In stylistics terms, it means that the more compressed the angle of simile in Khorasani style, the more frequent literal similes would be, which is in line with the dominant norms of Khorasani Style.

According to some theories of narratology, occasionally the narrator and the viewer of fictional events may differ. Such theories coupled with fictions that have unconventional structures and are structurally rhetoric-oriented, makes the analysis of narrative increasingly intricate. "Khane Roshanan" from the collection of stories of the Nimeye Tarike Mah [The Dark Side of the Moon] by Houshang Golshiri is one of such stories. The narration of this story, with a structure based on the first-person plural point of view, along with the disruption of the chronological order and the ambiguities that exist in the process of understanding the narratorchr('39')s identity, has made it difficult to identify narrators. Relying on the point of view of this story, this paper tried to examine the unique characteristics of narrators, which include the flow of awareness. Upon analysis it became apparent that the selection of the collective narrator has resulted in retaining the structural coherence of the story by keeping the narrative language coherent, despite the narratorchr('39')s unbalanced awareness in different parts of the narration.

Figure and ground are cognitive devices for text analysis, indicating a phenomenological relation between literature and human beings. So critical research by cognitive poetics approach, on one hand, includes the possibility of analyzing texts considering the author, text and reader simultaneously, although different traditions have emphasized on just one or two of them. On the other hand, it gives phenomenological value to the literary research for the reason that it is created based on body, mind and human life. The concepts of figure and ground were first introduced in Gestalt Theory, and they were later developed in cognitive poetics to make the comprehension of a text possible, as lack of figure in any text can lead to a flat reading. Figure could be created through repetition, unfamiliar naming, innovative metaphor, creative syntactic ordering, use of puns, inner rhyme in a text, or any other technique which results in deviations from the expected use of language.  This paper draws on the function of figure and ground to analyze a poem by Nima Yooshij, entitled “Oh, Humans” through a cognitive poetics approach. It studied how analytical devices of cognitive theory with neurocognitive and psychological bases could explain the cognitive deviation from the Persian classic meter. Furthermore, it embodied a way that "the self" as a core of consciousness is interpreted through the structural arrangement of the words as well as "the other" as the historical memory in the background. Moreover, this poem is cognitively and structurally classified in three episodes based on the figure and groundchr('39')s usages, so the iconicity (similarity) of the form-meaning could reflect the absence of dialogue between the self and the other through discursive worlds. This proposes that the representation and recreation of the author-reader’s world through the form (structural arrangement) in a literary work equals the meaning that a text’s world tries to create. Therefore, the study of meaning is not disjointed from the form, that is, the cognitive conformity of form-meaning in this poem conceptualizes the self and the other, as it is conceptualized in the society.

Karbala has been a multiple and dynamic space and so the writers’ perspective on it was multiple and dynamic as well. Geocriticism is one of the new interdisciplinary approaches that focuses on space in postmodern era. Geocriticism investigates the relation between subject and space and studies the geographical space and the imaginary space of literary texts. The current study was aimed at investigating the effect of space stratification on readers in a selected number of poems. Such stratification was influenced by time as well, creating different layers of texts in space. The researchers tried to unfold the space-time layers in these poems that shaped the space of Karbala, based on the spatiotemporality principle of Westphal theory. The results indicated that poets would identify themselves with these layers of space, as they unveil the dialectic between the self and the other. Moreover, in this study the viewpoint of the Christian poet (exogenous) was studied against the Muslim poet (endogenous), by applying multifocalization principle of Westphalian theory. The principle focuses on different points of views being endogenous, exogenous and allogenous. The study reveals the convergence of selected poets’ perspectives.

Structuralist narratology does not provide methods and models to examine silence, ellipsis, and gaps in the text. This paper tried to examine the aspects of silence, ellipsis, and gaps in the narrative, by employing a text-based and analytical method. The text Nocturnal Harmony of Wood Orchestra was chosen for the analysis which is unreliably narrated. In order to identify unreliable narrator and also text’s unreliability, silences and narrative ellipsis were studied. Narrative style and related elements such as focalization, distance, narratee and the narrator’s motivation along with structural elements influence the types of ellipses in the narrative or they are influenced by the gaps of the unreliable narrative. The form can be used as a decentralization device to cover the silence or to create suspension by creating a gap. Moreover, anachronism can create or conceal the gaps and silence in narrative and frequent occurrences is a way of presenting and also covering the narrative gaps. Studying the relation between events and the catalyzer is also another way to understand the dimensions of silence and the devices that cover ellipses in the narrative. All of these were employed to study silence and ellipsis in the text.

Rewriting and recreating are among the methods employed to make classic Persian literature accessible to contemporary readers. Garshasb Asadi Toosichr('39')s letter is one of the prominent literary texts in the field of Persian literature that has been rewritten and recreated in recent years. In the current study, the content of reproduced works was analyzed against Garshabname under two separate sections of rewriting and recreating, to assess manipulation both qualitatively and quantitatively. The results showed that the authors of these stories used the script of Avesta and other Pahlavi scripts along with Garshasbname and by adding to the number of characters and conflicts and combining the events from different sources, have rewritten and recreated stories based on Garshasb’s character.