مجله مطالعات و تحقیقات ادبی
سال سوم شماره 2 (تابستان - زمستان 1385)

Since the early days of the Islamic era, Translation from Arabic into Persian and vice versa has been a common skill and has provided common grounds in various literary fields between the two historical nations. However, translation movement from European languages into Arabic, beginning in the revolution era in the Arab world and prior to the Constitution era in Iran posed a profound impact on almost all aspects of the two societies. This paper exclusively presents the impacts and achievements of translation affecting the growth and development in literature and its related areas including modernization, new trends in education, prose & poetry, novels and new literary schools. Finally, towards the end of the paper, some other functions of translation and its influences on literary forms and languages and, hence, the standards of aesthetics and literary essence as well as the addressee's tastes will be discussed.

Stories and narration have been among the rewarding achievements of poets and writers throughout the history of Persian literature. Accordingly, the popular stories with special attraction have frequently been narrated in poems and prose to express and convey the Gnostic and lovely contents. The story of the biography of  Excellency Yousef ( Joseph) which is known as the best stories in the Holy Koran , is one of the most beautiful and attractive stories of the Persian literature which has been repeatedly discussed by poets and writers from different perspectives. Two important narrators of this story are Jamalodin Mohammad Ardestani and Jami in the ninth century who has narrated this story in their poems and prose under the titles of Yousef Nameh and   Yousef and Zuleykha, respectively. Since the similarities and difference in the overall structure and the manner of narrating as well as inferences and results made are so considerable in these two works of arts, this article attempts to compare these two valuable works along with their introductions and highlight the differences and similarities from different perspectives.

The magnificent story of Rostam & Sohrab, which has been truly considered as one of greatest stories of the Shahnameh Epic, has attracted a wide audience of diverse status and background including serious researchers and instructors of this masterpiece. Among the one thousand verses or so, a number of verses have specially provided challenges for the interpreters of the great work of Iranian literature. Naturally, providing a full critical account of the viewpoints concerning all the challenging verses goes much beyond the scope of this paper. Hence, this paper addresses the existing critical comments on the very first two verses of the story. To this end, first, after stating the problem and briefing the background, we proceed to an evaluation of these views based on a clear typology of them prepared for the purpose of this study. Finally, we argue that there is a long way to go in order to publish a neat version of Shahnameh which is the true representation of Ferdowsi's poems. Furthermore, the existing interpretations are still far from being able to demystify the secrets of Shahnameh.

One of the basic approaches to the existing critiques of Sohrab Sepehri enumerates the linguistic, semantic, and artistic values and features originally derived from the Islamic mysticism. Two trends are quite discernible in these comments:  proving the mystic nature of his thoughts and poems and, in contrast, rejection, refutation and even teasing the idea altogether. This paper, initially, states the problem and explains the affinity between Sepehri's poetry and Islamic mysticism. Then, a critical evaluative account of the views for and against Sepehri's alleged orientation towards Islamic mysticism is presented.