Imaging by four elements in Ferdosi’s Shahnameh

The four elements have always played a significant role among the sciences, beliefs and myths of various nations and cultures and have been the source of the emergence of certain ideas, thoughts and works. These elements have not been neglected in the field of literature and have been widely and artistically expressed. One of the works in which the four elements are remarkable in terms of frequency, artistic effects and poetic illustration is Ferdowsi's Shahnameh. Ferdowsi had a special tendency to use the four elements to highlight his speech and artistic expression. In this paper, the frequency and how to use four elements in the illustrations of this work has been studied. The main question of the research is that in what way and how did Ferdowsi use the four elements in creating imaginary images?

The research method in this article is descriptive-analytical and the data collection method is documentary (library)

Ferdowsi has repeated the four elements in Shahnameh about 2688 times. Of these, 939 words are related to water (35%), 722 words are related to soil (27%), 598 words are related to wind (22%) and 429 words (16%) are related to fire. There are 12 verses in Shahnameh in which All four elements come together. Also, in 10 bits, three elements and in 51 bits, two elements are accompanied.

The most frequent elements in Shahnameh are water, soil, wind and fire, respectively. Also, most of the poetic images in this field are created in metaphorical structure and the share of expression techniques is much more than novel techniques.