فصلنامه کهن نامه ادب پارسی
سال چهارم شماره 2 (پیاپی 8، تابستان 1392)

The theorists in the field of narratology، which has been put forth less than a few decades ago، consider the narration as a tool for transfer of knowledge and define it in a broader sense. This branch of literary research is about the analysis of narration، especially the forms and types of narrator and is mainly linked to European structuralism as a modern theory. Nonetheless، the old studies of narrative forms and devices from the Aristotle''s Poetic Era too can be considered as works related to the science of narration and narratology. The present paper aims at presenting a definition of narration، nature، function and its historical background as well as introducing some new theories، within the framework of which various type of narration can be studied.

In classical rhetoric, two dimensions of words and sentences are expressed with terms like primary and secondary meaning; real and figurative meaning; or outward and inward meaning. The branch of rhetorical figures which focus on connotation is known as “the meaning” in Islamic& Iranian literary sciences. It can show the semantic areas of the text by analysis of sentences’ connotations. In the method of discussion, critics emphasize on subject matter and audiences, to find the final meaning. This essay reviews the dialogues of ROSTAM & ESFANDIYAR (from shâhnâme) through considering the situation of addressed characters and classifying of participants in dialogues to understand the artistic function of statements. The issuesare: 1. the theme and emotional impression have been expressed in the figurative meanings of dialogues. 2. dialogues have usually two functions: it connects or separates the events of story by its narrative roles; or reveals the feelings of characters by its emotional functions. 3. the common figurative meaning in sayings of ESFANDIYAR imply his critical position to political and ideological powers in shâhnâme- ROSTAM and GASHTASB. 4. the contradictory figurative meanings in sayings of ROSTAM imply his tragic position in the story.

Mathnavi-ye Ma’navi is one of the magnificent works that has always been a subject of review and analysis. A unique characteristic of this literary masterpiece is its structural-lexical unity in parallel sentences (syntactic and lexical rhythm). Parallel sentences are compound sentences, clauses of which are related in terms of coordination, interpretation, apposition, or emphasis. Each of these clauses may be bound compound. It should be noted that the role of syntactic patterns in creating rhythm and eloquence has been neglected. If figures of speech such as parallelism and leonine verse, which are based on prose rhythm and repetition, are studied from a syntactical perspective, it will become clear that the methods of parallelism and leonine verseare in fact parallel sentences that have identical grammatical and linguistic structures. In other words, the syntactic pattern is the basis of the mentioned figures of speech. In addition to the structural-lexical unity, rhythm of words and especially the end rhyme are of importance in these figures of speech, whileunity of grammatical and lexical structures is less focused.Molanawonderfully used this syntactic pattern in both his Divan and Masnavi, notrefraining from repetition of words, compositions,and sentences. It is maybe the parallel structure thatcreates rhythm in his poem. The present paper is an attempt to explaina grammatical point and to study the language of Masnavi in terms of aesthetics, and consequently, stylistics.

The problem of the present paper is to searchfor literary history-related information in historical sources. The authors of literary history books mostly rely on Tazkirahs (Persian biographical works) as their main sources, whereas it is the history sources that, due to the validity of their subjects and also the direct relationship of their authors with governments, should be considered as one of the main sources. The results of the paper indicated that some literary figureswho have been neglected in the Tazkirahshave been introduced as poets in history sources. Moreover, thereare disagreements between the authors of historical books andwriters of Tazkirahs, on the one hand, and literary historians, on the other hand. Although literary historians may be right in many cases, historical sources cannot be put aside at all. The historical sources are important from the point of view ofaudience of poets, which is a central issue in the theory of modern literary history. The reports, judgments, and information of these works, as representative of the mentality of the historians towards poetry, can be analyzed as such. The present paper is divided into three main parts: neglected poets, main poets and the disagreements between authors of literary history and historiographers about them, and finally those figures that tried their taste in classical dominant discourses, but are not recognized as poets.

Writing biography of poets in the area of thespread of Persian language has a long history and prevalence especially in Transoxiana and India. After the composition of Lubab al-Albab, a long pause in writing biography occurred. In the ninth century, only one biography, namely Tazkirah al-Shuara-yiDawlatshah, was written. However, from the late tenth century, writing biography flourished especially in India, where due to the existence of Iranian governments, a suitable environment for poets and Persian writers wascreated. A major biography written at that time was Majma’ al-Fuzala written by Muhammad Aref Bukhara’i. Unfortunately, there has been no significant research about the poet and his book. Indeed, most of the researchers have just quoted remarks from Abdul HaiHabibiand Alireza Naqavi, and have not added anything to them. One of the reasons for anonymity of Majma’ al-Fuzala and its author is the scarcity of it scopies. There are only two known copies of the book; one of them is located at Punjab University and the other one is at Tehran University. This paper attempts to analyze and review the previous researches about Majma’ al-Fuzala. The biography is reviewed and introduced based on the copy at Tehran University.

Bahmannameh is an epic poem which was compose dafter Shahnamehin imitation of this great work of Ferdowsi. The poem cites the heroic acts of Bahman–son of Esfandiyar–and his persistence on taking revenge on the family of Rostam after his death. However, functions of Bahmanare manifested as anti-epic rather than epic and heroic, and are in contrast with archetypical epic heroes. Neglect of the structural framework of epic, arrival of Bahman– as a hero– in the story without any preface, his continuous failure, his faintdivine splendor and legitimacy as an ideal king, fighting battles with heroes of Sistan and setting fire to this land instead of fighting with aliens and demons, lacking a sense of duty to fight evils, passing a calm Haft-Khan(Seven Labors) without any battle, and his failure in fighting with the only evil, i.e. dragon, are the most important factors which hinder the fulfillment of reader's expectations to meet an ideal hero/king and impede the creation of a magnificent epic. It seems that setting Rostam and his family as the opponents of Bahman also played a role in the formation of such contradictions. The structural base of the poet’s thought, unconsciouslyaccounting Rostam as a superhuman of the world of epic, dominates the atmosphere of the work and develops a hero whose functions against the heroes of Sistan appear so week and dim.

The frequency of interrogative verses in Naser Khosrow’s Divan is very high compared to other didactic poets، which can be understood from different point of views. This feature of Naser Khosrow’s style can be analyzed considering different extratextual aspects، the most important ones are: a) the effect of stylistic features of Koran on Naser Khosrow’s style b) the effect of Socratic Method on the educational enrichment of the poetry c) the rhetorical and aesthetical use of interrogative phrases to obtain artistic enrichment of the poetry d) the influence of Ismailite propaganda methods. This study tries to address these essential aspects of Naser Khosrow’s works based on the statistics extracted from his divan.