فصلنامه ادب پژوهی
پیاپی 17 (پاییز 1390)

Theory of Mimetic Desire is among the important anthropological theories in 20th century introduced by the French scientist, René Girard. According to this theory, which has also been used in the area of literary criticism, the origin of most aggressions and hostilities throughout history has been mimetic desire and mimetic rivalry; therefore the societies have used the “scapegoat mechanism” in order to lessen the rivalries.This theory can be used in analyzing masterpieces of literature as well as the ancient epic and mythology because all of them are in one way or another the manifestation of mimetic desire. As such the application of this theory to Shāhnāme’s tales might broaden our horizon of research about this Book of Ferdowsi.

“DR. N. liked his wife more than he liked Mosaddegh”, by Shahrām Rahimiān, is an impressive political novel that gives a new interpretation of coup d’etat against Dr. Mosaddegh through focusing on the psychological temptations of the political figures. The methodical study of the writer’s approach can be beneficial in some ways: firstly, It manifests certain aspects of intellectual life in Iran; secondly, it can be the narrative expression of the nostalgic viewpoint of Iranian intellectuals about some decisive events in Iranian contemporary history; thirdly, following a critical discourse analysis approach, it develops a conscious narrative strategy for criticizing contemporary political trends in Iran, typically used by Iranian novelists who live abroad; finally it proves that the writer’s attitude supports a nationalistic approach that puts aside the religious factors.

Mathnavi is a rule-rejecting and deconstructive text that destroys the accepted presuppositions of its readers about language, form, meaning and narrative of the text. The first impressive point about the tales is their innovative structures. The present article, after a brief review of the literary deconstruction, on the basis of the original version of tales and anecdotes and by disregarding the digressions and detachments of the narrator, investigates the deconstructive reading of tales by Mowlavi, trying to search for the additions and omissions of the poet in four selected tales in order to draw out the principles of his reading. In the world view of Mowlavi, all things and objects find their final meaning in relation to The Spiritual and The Creator, and at the same time they reveal all the explicit and implicit elements and concepts such as movement, collapse of absolutes and possibility of impossible, which are the sources of different readings of the tales as well as the reason for their dynamic and generative character.

Obeyd Zākāni’s Akhlāgh-ol ashrāf is different from his other works, both in themes and ways of making humor. Zākāni, in this work, through using parody and irony refers to the words of the previous poets and writers to say that morality is the origin of corruption, and immorality is the source of prosperity, to be able, in this way, to criticize the behaviors of different social classes. The very displacing of the religious and ethical maxims accompanied by Obeyd’s insistence on creating satirical atmospheres is an honest reflection of his time which under the socio-political hegemony of Ilkhanid was a thorough decadence. The satirical look of Zākāni on the works of Ferdowsi, Sa’di, Nizami and other great Iranian writers, has turned out his black humor into an encyclopedia of references to Persian literary masters, and thus not only reminds us of the wise words of the great thinkers but of the fact that how neglectful the people were of these words. This article, by using a descriptive and structural approach, performs a stylistic study on Akhlāgh-ol Ashrāf in order to show the ironical techniques used by Zākāni.

Themes related to Christianity have been among the prevalent allusive elements of Persian Poetry. The same interest can be seen in Persian modern poetry. Ahmad Shāmloo, due to his constant study of the classical texts and living with a Christian wife has been sufficiently acquainted with these themes and has made use of them in 25 of his poems. Shāmloo, although benefited from the authorized sources, was able to present an updated and innovative interpretation of them. Meanwhile, these elements in their turns, affected the poet’s morphological structure and syntactic formation, and also increased the cultural, socio-historical and mythical capacities of his poetry.

Hossein Kord Shabestari is a well known popular story of late Safavid period whose writer is unknown. Its subject matter is the exercise of the bodily strength by Iranian Shiite champions against their enemies. This article through studying the narrative characteristics of this story shows that its external omniscient point of view possesses many features of Iranian oral storytelling. The focalization is essentially on actions and events and thus dialog and description is not frequent in the story; meanwhile the narrator is sympathetic towards protagonist and takes position against the antagonists, and at times, following the procedure of old narrators, either intervenes the text or uses some similar techniques.

Linguistic Atlas consists of a series of maps locating language diversities in a geographical area. It is significant because it maintains the needs of dialectology, language planning and sociolinguistics. Due to the fact that there is no such an atlas for Gilan Province, the writers of this article have done their best to design one, based on 100 words; meanwhile, following the findings of this atlas, they try to answer two questions: what phonological processes can be seen in Gilan and Gilaki dialect? How do the central towns of Gilan differ from its other towns regarding the occurrence of phonological processes? It should be pointed out that another advantage of such an atlas is the possibility of depicting the boundary lines among Gilaki, Taleshi, and Turkish in Gilan Province.After selecting 100 words and interviewing with the Gilaki speakers and recording their voices, the researchers designed a map for each word to show its phonological and lexical diversities. According to the findings of research, 16 phonological processes take place in Gilaki dialect, of which the most frequent are respectively centralization, rising, deletion and affrication. It was also found that in non-central towns especially Roodsar, the phonological processes are more frequent.