A Comparative study of satirical tricks in Attar's Masnavi

Although Persian prose and poetry had not reached to its climax and flourishment in Attar’s era, historically we can call this era the most sensitive time due to the frequency of unpleasant incidents and events. In this era, there were all types of chaos and poverty and unexpected events. No one can claim not to feel disappointment and regret after investigating the incidents happened in this era. Although it seems that Attar was in spiritual and mysticism world and did not pay attention to what was happening around, he had many complaints and unpleasant feelings about events happening. Chaotic political and social incidents during 6th century created a wave of protests in Attar’s thoughts. But since he could not express such protests directly, he has included a series of tortures imposed on oppressed people in the form of satire. Therefore, the present research has used a descriptive-analytic method with the help of evidences from the texts of his works and emphasizing at verbal arts utilized by him such as contradictions, surprises, position collapse, allegory, paradox, symbolism, emblem, and … to investigate about this type of literary trick in poems composed by Attar. Findings showed that content techniques have had a very important role in creating the works of this poet regarding the functions.