نشریه فرهنگ و ادبیات عامه
پیاپی 43 (فروردین و اردیبهشت 1401)

Bahr al-Tawarikh is the oldest Naqqali (Iranian old dramatic story-telling) comprehensive scroll based on Shahnameh which Vares Bukharayi (1088 AH/1677 CE) compiled in the second half of the 11th century AH in Transoxiana, about half a century before the Naqqali scroll of Shahnameh (compiled in 1135 AH/1723 CE). Most of the copies identified as Bahr al-Tawarikh are transcripts roughly different from the work of Vares, not the exact transcripts of it. The present article provides new information about Vares which amends and completes previous studies and also introduces and reviews one of the authentic and complete transcripts of Bahr al-Tawarikh. This transcript has noteworthy and valuable specifications, especially its linguistic aspect and content which represent the Persian features to Transoxiana.

Lullabies, as the primary whispers of adults and children, have become a platform for research in the field of children and adolescent literature due to their thought-provoking content and diverse capacities. One of the practical fields of lullabies is to strengthen the spiritual intelligence of the audience. Spiritual intelligence and its strengthening in children is one of the issues in modern science. Based on this approach and focusing on the text of lullabies, components to enhance spiritual intelligence have been extracted from the text of lullabies and these components have been studied in a descriptive-analytical manner in the text of lullabies. The results of several components have been found in the texts of lullabies and the components of "sense of mission" and "self-awareness" have been among the most rewarding components

Mahmoud Dowlatabadi employs different literary devices, and proverbs and ironies from the folk culture to improve the quality of his works, particularly in novels of Kelidar, Missing Salouch, The Passed days of old people. This study employs a descriptive-analytical approach to classify the themes and content of proverbs and ironies used in the above-mentioned novels, and then extract the role of such literary devices in representing Dowlatabadi's ideas. The findings showed that the proverbs and ironies in these novels have sociocultural, political, and aesthetic-didactic themes within the texts. Also, these literary types carry religious and ideological themes which represent the lifestyle of people.

Complaint is one of the main types of lyrical literature. Poets, who see their existence as tarnished and even loved, express their biographies in the language of complaint and express their intellectual pain, failures, sufferings and disappointments. This descriptive-analytical research intends to investigate the theme of complaint in the popular couplets of Mazandaran and Khorasan. By studying more than 3000 popular couplets in Mazandaran and Khorasan, 435 couplets, that is about14.5% of the complaint theme, were discovered. These glories are divided into two categories in terms of content: personal and philosophical. Based on the research findings, it can be said that in Khorasan, the lover complains about the unfaithfulness of the beloved, and in Mazandaran, the complaint about the grief of homelessness has the highest frequency. In other complaints, such as complaints about the sorrow of love, homesickness, military service, parents, a love rival, loneliness, co an unfaithful woman, bad luck, the times, and God. The statistics of complaints in the two provinces are close to each other.

Rumors about the rulers formed an important part of the political culture of the people in the pre-constitutional period. Therefore, it is very important to know the role of rumor in the political action of the subordinates and its function in the face of domination. Our research questions are: In which part of the political life of the people was spreading rumors used? And which of the domains did it challenge? Our assumption is that rumor was used in all three main approaches of the subordinates: denying the official narrative of the government, thwarting the strategies of the rulers in shaping this narrative, establishing dialogue with the hegemons, and paving the way for rebellion. Rumors cast doubt on the capability of the government’s military forces. It denied the claim of inherent superiority of the ruling elites. It also rejected the ruler’s adherence to religious precepts. Some rumors also incited the people to revolt. In addition, people turned their hopes and aspirations into rumors as an excuse to reduce exploitation. The theoretical framework of the research is the theory of hidden transcripts by James C. Scott. He has tried to identify and explain the methods of the lower classes to resist domination.

Rhetorical scholars have, from the beginning to the present, turned their full attention to formal literature. A review of the rhetorical books confirms this as well. This is especially true in the teaching of rhetorical topics in educational institutions such as universities, unaware that folk literature has its own structure and aesthetics, the neglect of which ignores a large part of the rhetorical capacity of the language. The present study borrows a descriptive-analytical method and uses the rhetorical criteria on the aesthetics enigma as one type of irony in folklore.
The results show that in the studies, only the rhetoric of the first part (description) has been considered and the other part has been neglected, while concealing and suspending the meaning according to the existing descriptions indicates that enigma is in fact an allusion to the subject. A point that has not been properly addressed so far has caused rhetorical books to be mistaken for a novel topic. The article discusses the difference between this kind of irony and the usual allusions of rhetorical, the explanatory books and the description of its beauties, in comparison with the examples of formal literature.

Adab Al-Harb va A-Shaja’ah is a valuable and specialized book in the field of war and war etiquette, which unfortunately has not been studied much. During the main topics of the book, which is militarism, we can find issues related to popular culture, customs, and folk beliefs. Due to the existence of various popular beliefs in this book, this study aims to focus on only a few specific beliefs related to wolves, ostriches and lions, which are rare and underused. Beliefs about ankle bone and bowstring are examined in the wolf debate, fire-eating beliefs in the ostrich debate, and fear beliefs in the lion debate. Extensive studies have shown that none of these beliefs have been studied so far, and in this article, as one of the first attempts, evidence from other texts and sources are examined. So far as research method is concerned, first, the book was carefully studied and different public beliefs and folks were extracted, then some specific beliefs were selected and described based on different sources.

The Masnavi Ma'navi is one of the most outstanding works of Persian literature in which many manifestations of our culture are featured. The origin of some Masnavi's anecdotes is in verbal literature, which has appeared in literary works for a long time. The expression of contemporary verbal narrations adapted from some of the Masnavi's anticathodes represents the repetitive stories which have been frequently recited in our literature and culture. The transformation of Manavi's stories in verbal literature is a matter for which studies have not been yet conducted by scholars. The difference in the form and structure of the stories, the clear change in the characters and the different interpretations are some of the transformations that have distinguished the verbal narrations and the narrations of Masnavi. The three anecdotes that have been selected as the basis for the work for exhibiting the transformation between the stories of Masnavi and the verbal narrations are: Three Travelers: a Moslem, a Christian, and a Jew, Nakhjirans' Reliance, and the Fool Who Trusted the Bear. The data indicate that Rumi presents many high mystical concepts in the form of narrations and textual codes, but most of the verbal narrations are presented for entertainment. Also, the verbal narrations tend to be reasoning-based ethics, whereas Masnavi's anecdotes are Rumi's specific individual ethics

The idea of duality and the mythical pattern of the cosmic battle is one of the major religious themes of Iran, which can be seen both in the content and in the executive structure of the Iranian theatrical traditions. In this mythical plot, two characters with opposite natures or opposing goals duel with one another, and in result, a kind of creative consequence such as liberation of water, liberation from captivity, moving from chaos to order, or a fertility of the world might occur. In some theatrical traditions of Iran, we trace the similar reflections of cosmic battle, a battle that symbolically represents a mythical primordial event, and via this imitable pattern, people, objects, and places of performance transcend each part of which becomes a manifestation of the sacred act/object. In this article, an attempt was made to take advantage of the mythological roots to examine the manifestation of the sacred in traditional performances such as “Sukhan-vari”, "Daeeshmeh Ashiq", "Pahlavan Kachal" and "Mir-e Nowrusi” through the perspective of Mircea Eliade’s historiography. The researchers tried to explore how this pattern, particularly the concept of cosmic battle, is represented in a series of traditional performances that have been considered as a part of idiosyncratic and life necessity in popular culture.