فصلنامه نقد ادبی
پیاپی 10 (تابستان 1389)

In historical studies, period is a regulative concept. It helps historians of arts and sciences classify historical information. In most literary histories, periodization is the most essential basis of division. Periodization also was applied in literary studies like rhetorics. For example, Shawqi Zaif has divided the history of Islamic-Arabic rhetorics into periods. In this article, we are to propose a schema for periodization of history of Persian rhetorics. System of Persian rhetorics was originally derived from Arabic rhetorics but the quality and quantity of adaptation in different periods wasn’t the same. In some cases, Persian rhetoricians came up with important innovations in periodization and sometimes they made use of rhetorics of the other civilizations for instance Indian rhetorics in order to study aesthetical aspects of Persian literature. Base on the historical era they were living in and the similarities of their approaches, we can distinguish four different periods: 1. Localization Period: This period, as the first period of Persian rhetorics, includes the most important books of Persian rhetorics: Tarjoman al-balaqa, Hadaeq al-sehr, and Al-mo’jam fi ma’air ash’ar al-ajam; 2. Interpretation and Imitation Period: Most of rhetoric books in this period are interpretations of previous period; 3. Pseudo- Indian Period: In this period, a few rhetoricians try to apply Indian rhetorics to Persian literature; 4. Scholastic Period: The last period is a contemporary one and includes new rhetorical textbooks.

This article has categorized Sufi prose in two contrasting species: the first is constructed discourse (kalām-e motamakken) and second one is deconstructed discourse (kalām-e Maqlub). These two terms have been used by Sufis in their books. The distinguishing bases of these two discourses are the epistemic origin, source of knowledge, text content and the function of language in Sufi discourse. Constructed texts contain social concepts of Sufism and originate from a collective and ideological knowledge. Indeed they organize a group state and the language plays the role of a regulator in them. The deconstructed discourse is the second group of texts that have their roots in personal experiences and create a new imaginative and textual world. A deconstructed text, in terms of implications, is an open text that is flexible for interpretation and metaphorical pole of language dominates it, while constructed text hinders further interpretation. The article at the end shows the transformation process of Sufi prose from the constructed discourse word by word to the deconstructed discourse.

Study of conceptual metaphor of Light in the Divan-e-Shams In this paper, will be explained functions of light and visual clusters like Sun, candles, lights and etc, in the Ghazal of Molavi based on using cognitive theory of contemporary metaphor. Concept of light in the Divan-e- Shams indicate that visual recognition and knowledge is a concept and it present as a primary metaphorical mapping in deep-structure; Molavi concerned this mapping and secondary mapping "divine world is light", and he has accounted light as God, perfect man, place, food and wine, the guidance and hope. Also he has explained subject of existence and nonexistence. The metaphorical mapping makes appropriate categories for Molavi's abstract analysis and shows intratextual coherence of the sonnets with primary mapping.

Connecting the literary text world to reader's world as well as reading all signifying aspect of a fiction's world is not achievable by literary criticism, so it seems there is a necessity to have a theory which could study the text world in terms of both scientifically and literary creativity, that is a theory which produces the possibility of scientific survey of literature. To evaluate text world theory, in this article, it is supposed to analyze all the fictions of “the panthers who have run with me” by Bijan Najdi, an Iranian story writer. The question raised in this paper is, therefore, whether text world theory could identify the elements which structure Najdi's fiction narration? Then how he is distinguished from other authors through the production of his text world and understanding them by readers? To answer the first question, every text includes three levels: discourse world, text world and text sub-world to construct a part of the narration. The answer to the second question, Najdi produces a cohesive discourse world in his book by considering some common elements in all his fictions, so the separated fictions would be connected to each other invisibly. The important point in this paper is that, according to Najdi's text world's reading, every world could embed another world inside and create an underlying fiction by different narrative techniques. To conclude, the most important point in Najdi's works is the production of sub-stories by underlying or sub-text worlds, which are activating underlying stories.

One philosophical theme often attributed to Khayyámic rubáis is nihilism, which unfortunately has not been examined in detail and according to a firm theoretical basis. This paper probes into the theme in two famous Persian collections of such rubáis: Sadeq Hedayat’s edition of Taraneh-haye Khayyám as well as Forughi and Ghani’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. For this purpose, the paper consists of an introduction as well as two main parts and a conclusion. In the introduction, the necessity of holding the theory of Khayyámic rubáis —that is, a school of rubái-composing after Omar Khayyam and not the Rubáiyát of Khayyam— is explained. In the first part of the paper, which is entirely theoretical, based on Donald Crosby’s classification of nihilisms in his book, The Specter of the Absurd, two relating types of nihilism along with some common arguments for nihilism are mentioned. In the second practical part, the aforementioned definitions and assumptions are applied to the rubáis under discussion. At the end comes the conclusion.