Persian Language and Literature

The Semantic System of Mystical Intuitive Experience and Its Narration

Atefe Amirifar

Mystical experience refers to a kind of intuitive-occult experience completely beyond the reach of the mystic-subject. Hence, the mystic is unable to fully perceive it and to repeat its quality. This inability is not merely caused by the inexpressibility and the transcendental quality of the intuitive experience, but by the semantic system governing the intuitive event and then by its narration in the language of the mystic-subject. The semantic system governing the intuitive event is based on coincidence, confronting the subject with a stressful environment and occasion without any plan or presupposition. The semantic system of coincidence is one of the four semantic systems of Landowski, which is consistent with the quality of mystical and intuitive experience along with the narrative of this experience in the mystic-subject’s verbal and non-verbal language. Based on the semantic system of coincidence, in the continuous course of life, the mystic-subject suddenly encounters an unknown and extrasensory experience, fundamentally different from the program-oriented rules of the ordinary life and affecting him in two compressive and expansive dimensions. He is not only surprised while encountering an intuitive experience, but also finds the linguistic rules insufficient for reporting its quality. Thus, the subject will produce a new form of language and meaning with his verbal and non-verbal language owing to this coincident and stressful process.

Aesthetics and Death in Bahram Sadeghi’s "Malakut"

Sina Bashiri

Modern art and literature transformed the foundations of modern aesthetics by paying attention to the negative and unconventional philosophical topics that did not play an important role in classical aesthetics. “Death” is known as one of the central elements of modern literature based on the thoughts of the existentialist and post-structuralist schools. In the modern novel, death plays an essential role in the structure and texture of the story in terms of content, language, and art; and many of the aesthetic aspects of the novel revolve around it. Sadeghi, as one of the leading writers of Iran, made “death” the subject of his novel, “Malakut”, and used many of the literary aspects of his work around this concept. In this research, using the descriptive-analytical method, the aesthetic aspects of death in “Malakut” have been analyzed, which are tied to other components of modern aesthetics. The findings of the study show that the relationship between death and other components of modern aesthetics such as paradox, absence, and ambiguity has led to the importance of the dark aspects of existence as well as the rejection of the work based on the classical and conventional standards of aesthetics.

Suppression Guide: Analysis of the Story of Mazdak in Siyāsatnāmeh Based on New Historicism

Summoning and recalling the past is the result of social and political crises of the present. In order to legitimize and confirm the rulers, Muslim writers tried to match the schemas of ancient times with their contemporary examples. In such adaptation, the existing king was compared to the ideal king and his performance was compared to that of the Golden Age of Iran. The centralized and organized historiography of the Sassanids narrated the story of Mazdak in order to legitimize the power and performance of the Sassanids and created an ideal image of the era of Anushirvān and his justice. Khājeh Nizām al-Mulk, who was in charge of the ministry in a turbulent era, was searching for an ideal government in the era of Anushirvān. To deal with the Ismaili movement, he resorted to the example of the killing of the Mazdakians by the Sassanid government in the final part of Siyāsatnāmeh, and by reconstructing the historical patterns, he not only confirmed the killing of the Mazdakians, but also legitimized the suppression of the Seljuk opponents.

A Mytho-Sociological Analysis of the Chapters “The Lion and the Bull” and “Investigation of the Conduct of Dimnah” from the Book Kalila and Dimnah (with an Emphasis on Social Classes)

zahra jamshidi

Kalila and Dimnah is one of the common literary and cultural works of India and Iran and many of its contents were written based on the Aryan thought of these two peoples. In the present article, the issue of social stratification in the chapters “The Lion and the Bull” and “Investigation of the Conduct of Dimnah” has been analyzed with a mytho-sociological approach and with a descriptive-analytical method. The mytho-sociological analysis is a method that can reveal the mythological roots of some sociological concepts. The ideas of Georges Dumézil show that classification among Indo-European peoples was one of the main structures of creating social order. Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore also hold such beliefs in their sociological studies. The analysis of the aforementioned chapters of Kalila and Dimnah with these two mythological and sociological theories shows that the structure of the story of “The Lion and the Bull” is consistent with the class structure of Indo-European societies; a class structure that does not tolerate class mobility in any way and as it is clear in the “Investigation of the Conduct of Dimnah” chapter, those who engage in class mobility will have no end but destitution and destruction. In the studied chapters, Dimnah is the agent of failed class mobility, Kalila is the defender and acceptor of stratification as an undeniable reality; and the lion, lion’s mother, and the panther, who belong to the elite class, are the protectors and maintainers of stratification as a regulatory structure. The stratification in these chapters is another form of the mythical tripartite functions of Indo-European societies, which itself has become the cause of the formation of social classes in these societies.

Space as a Dynamic and Multifaceted Element: A Lefebvrian Analysis of Al-e-Ahmad’s Nefrin-e-Zamin

Ensiyeh Darzinejad

Nefrin-e-Zamin (The Curse of the Land) is a novel by Jalal Al-e-Ahmad about a teacher who narrates his presence in a nameless village. The novel displays the transition from tradition to modernity. It takes place during land reforms of the then government. The present article is an analysis of the novel from the perspective of Henri Lefebvre. Lefebvre challenges the alleged static features of space and introduces it as vibrant and multi-layered. From this stance, the village is an active and dynamic space redefined in the course of the story. The teacher’s entry into the village, as a stranger, becomes a means to depict the multifaceted nature of the village. Lefebvre’s three-part dialectic, comprising the teacher’s perceived, conceived, and lived experiences in the village – represented in spatial practice, representations of space, and representational spaces – are investigated in this study. The teacher’s visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile perceptions of the village space are studied in detail. The correspondence or discrepancy of the teacher’s mental conception and his lived social experience in the village are discussed next in this paper. The fragmentation of the homogeneous space of the village and its hierarchization to exercise the power of the ruling class of the village are also investigated. Finally, the paper looks into the right of the villagers and strangers to the city and its two subcategories – the right to participate and the right to occupy. The teacher, the steward, and the painter from Shurab are the strangers in the village whose right to the city is important. From Lefebvre’s viewpoint, the village is not a neutral and passive space; rather a dynamic and multifaceted space that has significance and undergoes change and reinterpretations.

A Psychological Criticism of the “Evil Mother” Archetype in Sadegh Hedayat’s Stories

Vida Dastmalchi

In the series of research and psychological criticism of Sadegh Hedayat’s works, the issue of the evil mother among his various fictional characters deserves a separate study. The term “evil mother” derives from the dual aspect of the mother’s archetype in mythological psychology, which has been applied to the realm of humanities studies by the theories of Freud and Jung and their students. Hedayat depicted the evil mother and the consequences of her presence in the lives of the main characters of his stories in the novel Buf-e-kur (The Blind Owl) with the fluid character of the narrator’s mother (narrator’s aunt / narrator’s aunt’s daughter), in the short story Se ghatre khun (three drops of blood) with the character of Rokhsareh (evil woman), in Abji Khanom (Mrs. Abji), with the character of Abji’s mother, in Zani ke mardash ra gom kard (the woman who lost her husband) with the character of Zarrin Kolah’s mother and Zarrin Kolah herself, and in his two unpublished stories with the characters of the mother of the spider and the mother of the murdered man. Adopting a descriptive-analytical method, the present article investigates the power of the evil mother’s influence on the tragic fate of the characters in Hedayat’s works (mother complex, psychosis, suicide, homicide). The findings indicated that there are symbols with the supporting role of the evil mother in Hedayat’s stories. Hence, the influence of the evil mother in the lives of the main characters is predictable i.e., confrontation with the mother, psychosis, suicide and homicide are repeated fates of characters in these stories.

What Did Jamālzadeh Do with The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan?

Sedigheh Jamali

In the republishing of the Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan, Jamalzadeh made changes so that the language, expression, tone and writing style of Mirza Habib Isfahani were altered. His changes in the “fragments of old phrases” and “morphology and syntax of sentences” aroused the reaction of the literary community of that time. While Jamalzadeh retained the main framework of the book, his method does not correspond to any of the technical terms for critical correction of texts. In order to understand the whys and wherefores of his method for republishing the book, the present study compared and analyzed three works: Mirza Habib Isfahani’s manuscript, Phillott’s edition, and Jamalzadeh’s reprint. Twenty percent of the volume of the book was selected for analysis: the author’s preface and fifteen chapters (five chapters from the beginning, middle and end of the work). The results indicate that the changes can be subsumed under three categories: 1. reduction through deletion or replacement; 2. expansion and finding equivalents; 3. transposition of parts of speech. The largest volume of changes in the text were created by expansions and finding equivalents for words, phrases and sentences and transpositions of parts of speech while deletions and replacements were used the least. These changes serve two main purposes: 1. strengthening the fictional elements of the book and 2. bringing the story closer to the understanding of the common people based on the capabilities of the popular language, in the continuation of the simple writing movement of the Qajar era. However, Jamalzadeh inflicted irreparable blows on the prose rhetoric of Mirza Habib’s translation.

Deconstructing and going far beyond the binary oppositions in Sufi texts (data from Persian prose books)

nasergholi sarli

The researchers of mysticism and Islamic Sufism have considered the making of the language of Sufism and mystical discourse as one of the most important aspects of the history of Sufism. Especially the gradual differentiation of the language of Sufism from the language of religion and its transformation into an independent discourse has been the subject of valuable researches. The researchers have demonstrated that mystical experience and Qur'anic interpretation are inseparable at first and the language of mystical experience merely uses Quranic words, but gradually, mystical experience becomes independent and adopts the Qur'anic language/language of religion and acquires its very own language. One of the lexical features of the language of Qur'an/religion is the use of binary opposition. Binary oppositions such as Paradise/Hell, Good/Evil, this world/the Hereafter among the basic religious and Quranic teachings and are used with high frequency in Sufi texts. The use of binary oppositions in Sufi texts goes far beyond religious binary opposition, and especially in Sufi textbooks, many new terms are formed based on binary opposition.One of the distinguishing aspects of the language of Sufism is the deconstruction of binary oppositions. The deconstruction is applied both in the binary oppositions of religion and in the oppositions formed in the language of Sufism. It has various and different forms and aspects, and its analysis may provide us with the most creative and innovative aspects of Sufis' worldview and mystical experience. This linguistic invention, which is rooted in the novelty and uniqueness of mystical experience, is a sign of the authenticity of that experience. In this research, we have investigated the deconstruction and departure from binary opposition in a corpus including the most creative words of the Sufis in Persian prose texts. By analyzing and classifying the different forms of the deconstruction and going beyond the binary opposition, the article shows how this feature grants the language of Sufism a special artistic and poetic characteristic, and places it in a completely different level compared to religious texts and the language of Shariat. Going far beyond the binary oppositions is closely related to the paradoxical feature of the language of Sufism and provides the possibility of expressing more complex experiences for Sufis.

The Macro-Construction of Nima Yushij’s Quatrains

ahmad sancholi

Macro-construction refers to the basic structure that explains and interprets the system and organization of a text or discourse. In the study of the macro-construction of Nima’s quatrains, which is based on the discourse and text construction plan of Lotfollah Yarmohammadi about Khayyam’s quatrains and is grounded on three constructs of “description”, “recommendation” and “explanation”; three more constructs of “wish”, “regret” and “surprise” are also recognizable. According to this plan, Nima’s quatrains can be divided into three groups of one-construct, two-construct, and three-construct quatrains. The one-construct quatrains account for more than half of all Nima’s quatrains. The main and pivotal construct in Nima’s quatrains is the description construct, which has the highest frequency, in which Nima describes his condition, especially his emotional condition through romantic conversations with his beloved one. Moreover, the descriptions of nature, man, the world, and other general categories are other aspects of the description construct in Nima’s quatrains. Since in the communication system of Nima’s quatrains, the sender is in the center and focus, the discourse of his quatrains is descriptive. In these poems, Nima’s perspective on categories such as love, man, and the world is often a view based on traditional attitude and just in the quatrains in which he describes nature, the signs of his novel insight are visible.

The Position of Correspondence in Nasir Khusraw’s World View

maryam kasayi

In Nasir Khusraw’s thought system, correspondence, which is constructing similitude and connection among constituents, stages, and domains of the world, human and Ismailism, has a special position. In his view, there are close and delicate relationships and similarities among stages of existence and existential spheres of human being with different dimensions of Ismaili doctrine. Based on a descriptive-analytical method, this study tries to find answers to the following questions: What are the areas of correspondence in Nasir Khusrawworks? What are the backgrounds and origins of correspondence in his works? And what is his objective of designing and developing the correspondence approach? This study shows that correspondence between the major and the minor worlds, correspondence between the spiritual and the physical worlds, and correspondence between the stages of the call to Ismailism and the constituents of existence are the most important areas of correspondence in Nasir Khusraw’s writings. The origin of the special attention to correspondence in his thought stems from the mythology and philosophical thinking of different nations as well as the works of grand Ismaili priests. The aforementioned domains are interrelated and Nasir Khusraw’s main objectives of his widely propounding this approach are understanding existence, explaining the human place in the world’s stages, and substantiating the truth of Ismaili teachings.

Investigating Erotomania Disorder in Two Stories

Masoumeh Mahmoudi

Research shows that the study of literary texts about an illness, especially from a phenomenological perspective, can contribute to a better understanding of the patient and the illness and lead to knowledge of the world and the human way of thinking. Obviously, this approach increases the appeal and interest of the audience in the study of literary works and opens up new horizons for them. On the other hand, among human emotions, the expression of love and behavior related to romantic feelings is more frequent in literary works, especially in the works of female writers, and erotomania, or romantic psychosis, is one of the delusional disorders reflected in these works. This descriptive-analytical study examines how the symptoms of erotomania are described in two short stories, named “Rana” from Nazli story collection written by Moniro Ravanipour and “Bad az Tabestan” from Chahar Rah story collection by Ghazaleh Alizadeh, according to DSM-5 diagnostic criteria. The results indicate that the fictional characters in the works studied show symptoms that meet the clinical diagnostic criteria of the disorder in question. In these stories, in addition to the description of clinical symptoms, the authors have also considered sexual, social, economic, and cultural factors. This shows the ability of the writers to create realism and credibility in the plot of the story, which makes the reader better connect with the text and get influenced by it. Moreover, the description of the feelings and beliefs of these characters and their effects on their lives and personal and social relationships can help readers to better understand the way of thinking and the life experience of those people and create communication that comes from understanding a psychotic person in the real world.

Investigating the Humorous Features of “Dirin Dirin” Animation Series Using the General Theory of Verbal Humor

Hamed Noruzi

“Dirin Dirin” animation series is one of the most successful adult comic animation series, which has a critical view on various social issues and has attracted many audiences. In this article, the authors have sought to analyze the humor-creating factors in this animation. The present analysis was conducted using the general theory of verbal humor. This theory investigates humor using six sources: the knowledge of script opposition, logical mechanism, target, situation, narrative strategy, and language. For this purpose, 65 episodes of this series were randomly selected and analyzed based on the general theory of verbal humor. The obtained results indicated that the sources of script opposition (average 2.27%), logical mechanism (average 2.61%), narrative strategy, and language were found in all the episodes, and for situation source, 75% of the analyzed episodes had a situation which itself created humor. In the source of knowledge, 23 episodes had a critical purpose, and 43 episodes had an educational purpose. Based on the findings of this research, the sources of the knowledge of script opposition, logical mechanism, and language are the most important factors in creating humor in this animation series.

An Analysis of the Structure of Fi Halat al-Tufulliyah Treatise Based on the Actantial Model of Greimas

majid houshangi

In the period of new criticism and with the formation of new methods of narratology, several patterns emerged in the field of narrative recognition and criticism. In the meantime, Greimas’s model, inspired by Propp’s narratology, and relying on the philosophical principle of contrast, tried to analyze narratives based on the six actants of subject/object (goal), helper/opponent, sender/receiver in a new text analysis system. On the other hand, Suhrawardi, in a pre-textual style, and relying on his philosophical data, used the language of narration and allegory to explain his thoughts in such a way that some of his narrations can be analyzed from the perspective of Greimas. Based on a descriptive-analytical method, this research has analyzed the structure of contrasts in Fi Halat al-Tufulliyah treatise. The results indicated that the structure of this narrative is in a layered and nested form, arisen from the thought characteristic and dominant patterns in Suhrawardi’s mind and the presence of actants in this narrative can perfectly be seen and in some micro-narratives it is in the fluidity of roles. On the other hand, despite the presence of all three action elements in the macro-narrative and micro-narratives, the dominant action element can be considered as a covenant that plays a role in the attractiveness of the narrative compared to that of other Suhrawardi’s treatises. Finally, the object/goal alignment in the macro-narrative and the other four micro-narratives would lead to the prominence of this goal i.e., “reaching peace” in his thought system.