Linguistic and rhetorical functions in the poetry of Anwari

Anwari’s divan is of prime importance and worthy of consideration from different perspectives especially from the linguistic one. He wrote poetry in five different forms: qasideh, qit’ah (fragment), ghazal (lyric), maṯnawi, and ruba’i (quatrain). However, what attracts one’s attention to his poetry is the versatile language and mode of expression he employs in different literary genres and forms. Consequently, although there are apparent similarities as to the thought and language of his composition, the stylistic characteristics of his poetry should be separately analyzed with regard to every given form. Employing an archival descriptive-analytical method, this article deals with the stylistic and linguistic peculiarities of his poetry regarding the forms, themes and audience appropriation in selected poems from his poetry collection. Results obtained from the analysis of Anwari’s poetry suggest that the poet employs different modes and techniques of expression appropriate to the subject matter, form, object of praise (mamdouh), and audience. In general, Anwari’s poetry can be studied in four types of language registers: 1) language appropriate to court and praise poetry; 2) language appropriate for advice; 3) language of the common people and in some cases the language of the lower class of the society: 4) lyrical and romantic language. With a fair and careful evaluation of Anwari's poems, it is proved that he can well handle the variety of forms and themes and the variety of language and expression in proportion to them, merge the word and the meaning in proportion to each other and make the most of language to express conceptual delicacies. Using various contemporary sciences such as medicine, astronomy, logic, etc., and at the same time approaching the language of the common people, Anwari created a modernity in the language of poetry. His poetry collection includes exemplary praise and court poems, poems palatable to common people’s taste and fascinating portrayal love poems.