نشریه تاریخ ادبیات
سال چهاردهم شماره 2 (پاییز و زمستان 1400)

Sabā’s Shahnshahnameh as the first historical-literary source of Iran-Russia wars, is one of the works that represent the close relationship between understanding the text and its historical context; in such a way that knowing the exact date of this poem’s composition - which depends on an accurate estimate of the poet’s birth - plays a significant role in understanding the events mentioned in the work. Also, the importance of a primary historical source as Shahanshahnameh is related to the time span between the narration of events, and when incidents actually occurred. Although both Sabā and his masterpiece, Shahanshahnameh, are so prominent, there are not enough crucial details available of the personal and literary life of Fath-Ali Khan Sabā, poet laureate of Fath-Ali Shah’s Court. Among the unknown or erroneous historical facts about Sabā’s life are his date of birth, and the composing time of his notable poem: Shahanshahnameh. In the circumstances that no primary source had mentioned these dates, the subsequent resources have been forced to estimate them, and unfortunately, they have made mistakes in their estimations. In the present study, the data are collected through Research Library Method; the collected data from the written sources was compared and analyzed. The results of this research are that Sabā was born in 1176 AH. He had been composing Shahanshahnameh at the period of 1221 to 1225 AH. and subsequently, he probably had been writing Khodavandnameh from 1226 to 1229 AH. Thus, Shahanshahnameh is the first available text about the first round of Iran-Russia wars. This Poem is the only source that has reported events simultaneously.

In the late eighteenth century, the efforts of the British East India Company agents to learn Persian to consolidate their dominance in India, led to the flourishing of studies in the fields of Persian language and literature, codicology, and the history of Iran. In this paper, the role of two pioneer periodicals published in Calcutta by Francis Gladwin, The Asiatick Miscellany (1785-1788) and The New Asiatic Miscellany (1789), is examined in the progress of Persian studies. To this end, the archives of these two periodicals were gathered and accurately studied to discover the motive for their establishment and identify the process of selecting, translating, and describing the excerpts of Persian literary works of Iranian and Indian writers. Afterward, the formation of the first research works in The New Asiatic Miscellany is discussed and the impact of these two publications on the familiarity of the British with the Persian language and literature is studied. The correspondence related to the two periodicals reveals that despite their considerable popularity, the commencement of the attempts to reduce the status of Persian, the administrative and literary language of the Mughals, paved the way for the closure of the two periodicals. But the wave of translating and imitating the Persian literary works launched with the help of these publications flourished the Persian language and literature studies in nineteenth-century Britain.

The present study investigates the mechanisms of euphemism in Shahnameh. It is assumed that euphemism is the conscious or unconscious substitution of harsh, unpleasant, or embarrassing taboo words for a mild or indirect word or expression, used to reduce the negative sense and therefore keep the image of the audience and social self-concept. Accordingly, euphemism is closely related to the concept of politeness. Having extracted instances of euphemism and their literal meaning, we analyzed the contextual meaning of euphemism according to Warren’s (1992) classification. The results indicate that metaphor, vague term, circumlocution, semantic implication, metonymy, particularization, and reversal are respectively the most frequent mechanisms for creating novel contextual meaning. The significance of the study can be found first of all in the frequent and skillful use of taboo words in Persian classic poetic and prose texts; then, lack of attention or understanding of the contextual meaning of euphemisms by some commentators of Shahnameh; and finally, the lack of systematic linguistic research in understanding euphemism in Shahnameh.

The style, stylistics, and its methodology do not have a clear definition in Iran yet. Although nearly seventy years have passed since the emergence of stylistics in Iran, the theoretical stylistic approach of its creator, Malek osh-Shoʻarā Bahār, has not been properly explained. It is suggested that his theoretical approach be studied through qualitative content analysis and soft operational research based on interpretivism primarily, to present a schematic, measurable and generalizable model. Then, in order to explain the causal relations of the effective categories in his theory, a questionnaire should be prepared for the experts to answer and the existing relations should be analyzed by DEMETEL. Data analysis shows that Malek osh-Shoʻarā Bahār's theory has 6 main categories, the most influential of which are “science and knowledge”, “literary knowledge and continuum” and “culture”, and the most susceptible of them are “researching style”, “the study of literary currents” and “style”. The result of the study reinforces the hypotheses and models of previous related research. The final matrix shows that “science and knowledge” is the independent factor and “research style” is the dependent factor. This article, in addition to showing the main categories of Bahār’s stylistic approach, can also change the research methodology in Persian language and literature.

Gol o Nowruz, the romantic masnavi of Khaju Kermani, the prominent and creative poet of the eighth century AH, has been critically edited for the first time by Kamal Eini and afterward by Saeed Niaz Kermani. These two critical editions have several shortcomings and problems that have been addressed in this study. The key shortcoming of their works lies is the absence of methodology; they have not adopted a specific method for editing the text of the available manuscripts. Moreover, neglecting the stylistic features of the text, the meanings of the words and verses, and the story’s narration has caused misreadings of this valuable text. Although Niaz Kermani has overcome some of the shortcomings of Kamal Eini’s work, his edition has its errors and inadequacies. In the present study, by a descriptive-analytical method, the two critical editions of Gol o Nowruz have been criticized. The flaws of both critical editions show that this valuable text requires a new and scientific critical edition

The purpose of this article is to discover and identify the factors influencing what can be considered as causes in the entry of eclectic narratives into the course of Iranian national history. We mean those narratives that have emerged through the integration of Indo-European and Semitic-Islamic characters. First, while criticizing previous scholars who mainly considered the reasons for the entry of these narrations to be related to the pre-Islamic period and the influence of Jews and Christians, this study has noted that there is no evidence of such narrations in Middle Persian and nationalist sources until the Islamic era. In addition, the research emphasizes the replacement of Islam as an alternative to the old religion. Consequently, the assessment of the chronology of events in the ancient world, based on the history of ancient Iran on the one hand and the legitimation of the personalities and traditions of the Semitic tribes on the other hand as the underlying causes that have led to the revelation of the contradictions of these two traditions in the cases of the “first man”, the division of tribes, prophecy, and monarchy. In conclusion, the research has considered the eclectic narratives made up of these two narrative currents as the solution of Muslim historians and genealogists to eliminate contradictions.

Muṣarraḥat ul-ʼasmāʼ is an Arabic to Persian bi-lingual dictionary compiled in the ninth century AH (15 century AD). This dictionary is significant in terms of unusual and rare words, compound pronunciation, and meanings of the words. The present article introduces more than 100 of these words with few explanations and evidence from other texts, based on data collected from accessible linguistic corpora. These words are classified according to being common in ancient texts, having rare pronunciations, bearing rare meanings, their special use in Muṣarraḥat ul-ʼasmāʼ, and their adherence to previous dictionaries. The findings of this study on Muṣarraḥat ul-ʼasmāʼ indicate the frequency and the use of unusual words, their phonetic changes, and linguistic alterations in the ninth century AH. Moreover, recordings of some words of this dictionary can help to read and record the vague words of other ancient texts correctly. In this research, a suitable platform has been provided for researchers in the fields of philology, semantics, lexicography, stylistics, vocabulary seletion, and so on

Peace is one of the human concerns which has been a significant concept in mystical literature and philosophical ideas. In the works of Attar and Rumi, two prominent Iranian poets, peace-seeking has been introduced and reflected as a social need to eliminate grudges and enmities. Mulla Sadra, the famous Iranian philosopher, also paid special attention to the concept of peace and tolerance. This article, with a descriptive-analytical method, studies the concept of peace-seeking in the works of Attar and Rumi and compares it with the philosophical view of Mulla Sadra on peace. It aims to examine the level of convergence and disagreement between Attar and Rumi’s Sufi views and Mulla Sadra’s philosophical approach to peace, as well as the possibility of linking their views. The result shows that pacifism as a social current in the works of Attar and Rumi under the title of “inner peace” and “total peace” has constant stability. With a Sufi attitude, Attar and Rumi have invited people to achieve inner peace and total peace on the basis of mystical experience (discovery and intuition) and in the light of moral virtues such as love, tolerance, contentment, and goodness. Mulla Sadra has also considered the manifestations of peace as the means to attain the position of “perfect man”; but the foundation of peace in Sadra’s philosophy, unlike the above-mentioned poets, is based on theoretical rationality with a moderate and justice-oriented approach, and he considers security in social life as a necessary factor for achieving peace.

Iranshahri Thought, particularly its political aspect, represents the system of thought that dominates the history of ancient Iran, which, despite all the changes, has continued in the Islamic period. In the surviving works of Persian literature, such as Kelileh va Demneh of Nasrollah Monshi, which is a fictional work, and Mersād al-ʻEbād of Najmoddin Rāzi, which has explained mystical views and Sufi etiquette, the reflections of the Iranshahri Thought can be clearly observed. Saadi is also a man from Iranshahr who, despite studying Islamic sciences in the Nezamiyye and being influenced by the Sufi thoughts, in his works, Golestan and Bustan, he manifested the ideas of Iranshahri Thought. The present study shows that all the components of Iranshahri Thought, including having a hierarchal view of the universe (especially of the human community), considering the king as the leader in the hierarchy of society, knowing the kingdom as divine and believing in Farr-e Izadi (divine royal glory) of the king, considering his opinion and speech as the law, the need to fulfill the duties (khishkāri), the distinct concept of justice, repeated advice to adhere the virtue of moderation, satisfaction and contentment with what the cosmic order has given man, and finally, considering religion and kingdom as a united concept are evident in Saadi’s works

Athir Akhsikati was a prominent poet of the sixth century AH whose Divan was published firstly in 1958 and afterward in 2019. As well as the mentioned editions' Dr. Abbas Mahyar has edited the Divan for his doctoral thesis. Considering Mahyar’s field of study and the fact that he had dedicated many years of his life to researching and editing this Divan, his edition represents a step forward. But it was as late as 2020 that his edition was published by Homeira Zomorrodi. The present article studies this recent edition of Athir Akhsikati’s Divan and compares it with two other editions. Because of the errors existing in these editions, especially the recent one, the paper concludes that re-editing this Divan seems necessary

Because of the significance of Shahnameh, its popularity increased during the period of Literary Return (Bazgasht-e Adabi). The poets of this period tried to resemble their works in terms of style, theme, language, and rhetoric to the poetry of prodigious poets, specifically Ferdowsi. This paper aims to study, with the analytic-descriptive approach, the allusions to Shahnameh in five divans of prominent poets of this period/school, Sohbat Lāri, Fath-Ali Khan Sabā, Qāʼāni Shirazi, Soroush Esfahani, and Dāvari Shirazi. Studying the five divans reveals that the aforementioned poets have allusions to Shahnameh in terms of imagery, panegyric, the artistic structure, the instructive and exemplary stories, mentioning poet’s personal status with the help of shahnameh stories, using shahnameh references in the parable form, and employing its narrative capacities in Shariteh of Qasideh (the prayer for the praised person in the ode). Comparing the frequency of allusions to Shahnameh in the five divans shows that Qāʼāni has used the most and Dāvari the fewest allusions amongst the five poets

Bakhtin, one of the leading literary theorists of the twentieth century, has been focused on novel among all forms of prose. Dialogism is one of the basic concepts of Bakhtin’s theories. According to him, the novel is a field of manifestation of various voices that generate meaning and value in relation to each other. Understanding these voices reveals new hidden layers of text. Bakhtin calls this multi-voiced reality “polyphony”, which represents the ideology and mentality of the speaker. Therefore, in this research, with the help of qualitative analysis and library studies, two novels by Amirhassan Cheheltan, Iranian Dawn and Love and the Incomplete Woman, are analyzed with a dialogic approach, regarding their components of dialogism such as stylization, observing the appropriate language of the characters, the combination of voices, intertextuality, grotesque, open ending, and uncertainty. The present paper concludes that the author’s use of several discourses in Iranian Dawn and Love and the Incomplete Woman has given them a polyphonic character. In fact, the author has been successful in presenting the content of his stories in a dialogical context with the high frequency of using these elements of dialogism, and he has strengthened polyphony in these two novels