مجله متن شناسی ادب فارسی
سال سیزدهم شماره 4 (پیاپی 52، زمستان 1400)

Monsha’at of khaghani is a glorious example of the qualities of Persian prose that, despite its great importance, has received little attention from scholars. On the other hand, the prose lyric literature has been neglected in comparison with its poetic type, and some have not considered this type of language to be effective for lyric literature. This research intends to study both cases by relying on the content analysis method and examining the lyrical aspects of Monsha’at text. With this aim, first, according to the known types of lyrical literature such as autobiography, praise, epigram, complaint, etc. the book was studied carefully and parts containing lyrical content were extracted and then introduced based on frequency. According to the results of the study, as prose is closer to the nature of language, Monsha’at more clearly reflects Khaghani's emotional images, autobiography, loneliness and bewilderment, praises, his high character, epigrams, incompatibility with his surroundings, and his delicate and quick-witted grievances. The obtained samples indicate that, contrary to the popular belief, Persian prose has no shortcomings in the expression of lyrical content, and in some cases, due to the author's lack of adherence to the poetry meter limit, lyrical prose has more literary impact and prominence.

Due to the connection that Hafez's poetry has established with the minds and languages ​​of Persian speakers since the eighth century, some of the historical constructions of his poetic language have been adapted to the common Persian language today and have been justified and interpreted. The phrase ‘hich kare nist’ that Hafiz has applied in one of his verses has preoccupied the minds of the commentators of his poetry. Whilst they endeavored to solve the seemingly-embedded contradiction in the meaning of this phrase, regrettably, the commentators have not mentioned verifications derived from the texts of ancient poetry and prose; rather, they have conversely tried to adapt it to some specimens from modern Persian. Thus, the present study attempts to problematize the difficulty of this phrase, the function of ‘nothingness’ in the history of Persian language in the axis of connotation, and its different grammatical functions; an issue most grammarians and lexicographers have not dealt with thoroughly. From this vantage, Hafez’s linguistic construction can be justified and explained in light of its application in verse and prose texts.

The ‘Complex Systems Theory’ is a new and holistic approach to analyzing systems, which in contrast to the partial-reductionist perspectives, begins by analyzing the structure of a system as a whole and proceeds to the functions of its components. Within the framework of this theory, we are concerned with characteristics such as non-linear behaviors, system’s chaotic and dynamic states, feedback process, synergistic composition, final stable balance in a cybernetic (self-control) state, etc. The existence of various actors and actionable agents, addition of the new and needed components for stabilizing chaos, non-linear interactions of the independent elements with each other and with the environment, and the effects of marginal elements on the anecdote of Sheikh San’an make it possible to analyze it within the framework of the complex systems theory. In the current study, we made an effort to critique this anecdote qualitatively. By assessing the unrevealed potentials of this anecdote, we tried to show that besides having a complex social system, it behaved in a non-linear and unpredictable way and that its intricacies were reduced by meticulously investigating its elements and their disorganized and complicated interactions, to achieve a thorough comprehension of the text. By the use of this approach, we could investigate the functions of Sheik San’an, his followers, and the Christian girl in relation to the other subsystems, such as sleep, fate, and death, and holistically illustrate the dynamic evolution of its components. The system evolved in the self-controlled states of Sheikh San’an and the Christian girl as two major subsystems through the feedback process, thus dealing with a self-organizing system. This study could contribute to the illumination of the unseen potentials of texts that could be re-read in this way.

Music is one of the characteristics of literariness and a factor for literary work which influence the audience. Music can also be considered as a factor of distinguishing the various literary genres. The quality of applying the music-making techniques in poetry varies according to the skill, taste and creativity of the poet, the content of the literary work, the textual-linguistic context and other and etc. In this article, by examining and comparing the two lyrical stories of Bijan and Manijeh, and the epic of Rostam and Sohrab from Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, we showed that the music of poetry in these two narratives are significantly different. In other words, Ferdowsi uses different methods to create music in these two stories, and this difference does not occur by chance or without reason and logic. In order to show the quantitative and qualitative differences in the applying of music-making techniques, we identified them in three main categories of external, lateral, internal and semantic. In this section, we have extracted and introduced some of Ferdowsi's methods for creating poetic music, which have been less or not considered in the books which are dedicated to this subject. Then, considering the skill of the poet in using the techniques of creating music, we came to the conclusion that the music of poetry in the epic story of Rostam and Sohrab in comparison with the lyrical story of Bijan and Manijeh has more diversity, creativity And consistency because of some reasons.

Some works of Muslims in the interpretation of the Qur'an and the history of prophets have been influenced by the Torah and Jewish historical books. One of these works is Anis al-Moridin and Shams al-Majalis. It is a  ‪Mystic interpretation in Persian that has recently been edited and published for the first time. We have found many Israeli narrations in this work. Most of them are in the narrations related to the following parts of the story: the story of the birth of Jacob and his twin brother named Eis and their enmity; some descriptions about the numbers and the names of Jacob's wives and their children;  some of Joseph's childhood dreams in which he saw his superiority;  the name of one of Joseph's brothers who prevented him from being killed; Joseph's nakedness before his brothers threw him into the well, the dryness of the well; Joseph’s selling to the caravan passengers and his price; dipping Joseph's shirt in the goat blood; Jacob’s crying and waiting impatiently for Yusuf;  the name of the King of Egypt such as Potiphar; the prisoner and prison officer's love for Joseph; the number and name of Joseph's children; the vehemence of Joseph with his brothers in his palace in Egypt, and so on. This comparative study concluded that Israeli narrations have been used extensively in Anis al-Moridin and Shams al-Majalis, like some other ancient books.

Saint Joseph's manuscript is one of the most authoritative manuscripts of Shahnameh, to which researchers have paid special attention. Some scholars have evaluated a small part of it and tried to show its link with other manuscripts. However, no statistical analysis has been provided on the similarities and differences between this manuscript and the authentic versions of Shahnameh. The relationship of the mentioned manuscript with other manuscripts could be found by classifying it into a specific group of manuscripts. Accordingly, the following questions arise: which manuscripts of Shahnameh are related to this manuscript and to what extent are its importance and validity shown by them? To answer these questions in this research, some statistics were carried out on the similarities of the mentioned manuscript with the authentic manuscripts of Shahnameh. The results showed that this manuscript was close to the version of London (675 AH) from introduction to the kingdom of Lohrasp, but there was no close bond between the two from the reign of Lohrasp to the end of Shahnameh. Saint Joseph's manuscript was mostly related to those of Leningrad (733 AH) and Paris (844 AH), all of which could be classified into one group. This illustrated the possibility that they had been copied from the same original manuscript.