نشریه مطالعات تطبیقی هنر
پیاپی 2 (پاییز و زمستان 1390)

Magnificent and beauty contributed to the architecture, especially during the Islamic era, is due to the decoration of the buildings. Chahar Bagh masjed-madreseh (mosque-school) in Isfahan is one of masterpieces of Safavid period and also masjed Seyyed is Isfahan is one of the buildings built in the early Qajar period, especially in terms of decoration and tiling patterns.Review, study and comparison of tiling patterns of the two buildings Can be recognized the cultural identity of these two buildings. The present research is based on the relative lack of scientific study of the historical architecture of the schools buildings in our country especially in the field of decorating and using analysis-description method and library studies in the field of architectural decorations of the two buildings and the field studies, tries to assist and compares the tiling patterns of the two distinctive buildings from Qajar and Safavid eras.Research findings show that the geometric and plant motifs on the tiles, decorating most of Chahar Bagh School, is abstract which benefits from a simple and fluent solidity, of which the decorative handwriting is dominantly Kufic and thulth handwritings. In masjed-madreseh Seyed, the decorative images such as fruits, grapes, flowers, vases, bowls, landscape and plates have been used in a high multiplicity and also applied, under the impact of decorative arts, in the West, as some realistic, abstract and non-duplication designs. Nastaliq hadwritiing is the most dominant in the inscriptions.

Dragon-killer in national myths is an advocate that, with the help of god or deities for protecting people and making peace, does battle with the dragons. The dragon and dragon-killer have been represented with various signs in different cultures that are all the same, verbally and thematically and just differ from lingual aspects. Among from all versions of Dragon-killer myths around the world, we would concentrate on the Iranian and Indian ones throughout this research and especially would take myths of Bahram as an Iranian dragon-killer god and Indira as an Indian one, on one hand, and Iranian Fereydoun with Indian Rama, on the other hand, into comparative analysis consideration. The research method is based on library studies, in addition to Levi-Strauss’ structuralism theory. Moreover, according to Georges Dumezil’s theory, considering the Iranians and the Indians as a single race, we are to analyze the possible adaptation between Iranian and Indian myths, regarding Dragon-killer myths. This study shows the significant adaptations or similarities between Iranian and Indian dragon-killer myths, due to the general motifs of human mind or archetypes, on one hand, and the common cultural roots or background between those mentioned races, on the other hand. So, the common thematical aspects between Iranian and Indian myths regarding the dragon-killers stand beyond question. Moreover, the differences originate from the political, religious, social and geographical varieties through the passage of time.

Cityscape is a medium between man and the phenomenon of city as well as the visual-meaning-related embodiment of the components of space; one component of cityscape is the signage and billboards. Advertising billboards, introducing products and services- can increase the activity and vitality of space or cause confusion. This is where the cityscapes of most of the active city-centers are covered with colour billboards. These colorful billboards have been juxtaposed overtime to satisfy the needs of shop-owners and seek the attention of the customers; therefore, they show the unique characteristic which is a particular visual identity and is the result of the effects of people’s culture and is in accordance with the needs and taste of the day. Chahar-Bagh-e Abbasi street is one of the oldest and most important streets of Isfahan city that is covered with the ad-billboards of shops and stores. Shop signs as one of the elements of cityscape can have positive or negative effects on qualities of public spaces. This article has used descriptive- analytic way of research. Then by observing and collecting the information from the site, the strong and weak points of ad-billboards in Chahar-Bagh-e-Abbasi street were studied. Finally, it was concluded that the billboards have a form of harmony and arrangement with the fabric, though it does not contain visual attraction, due to the inappropriate use of color and lack of attention to the cultural background. And it is required to make reforms in this area. Three different approaches to accomplish these reforms are adopted. This article choosing the third approach establishes common quality and quantity principles provides suitable templates and examples and offers a design framework and general recommendations and organization of advertising signs on the Chahar-Bagh-e Abbasi street.

This paper, examined how post modern values are impressed in interaction of word and image under the domain of inter-genre and inter-textual circumstances. In order to solve this problem, we, based on phenomenological approach, it is hypothesized that any relationship should be analyzed in the framework of the discourse, and so, it should be necessarily considered any cultural, technological and other social circumstances specially with a glance to the anarchistic social factors of the postmodern era which may have any impact involved a quasi discursive situation in any semantic aspect of the signs. Beside that, any sensitive, cognitive and emotional aspects of a subjective interaction should be involved in the study. The results of this study show that a disruption in the bases of the genres and habits of the subjects, play a major role in the fall of the sensory - perceptual, identical borders and so finally, we are faced with a situation where it could be a “quasi discourse,”. In such a situation, “action” leads to be closed and the borders between discourse and non-discourse are ambiguous.

This article is a comparative study to investigate the morphology of Persian and Ottoman Royal swords during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Employing a descriptive-qualitative methodology and considering historical evidence, common and distinctive features of these swords in terms of their appearance, as well as their engraved patterns will be analyzed. After demonstrating the pictures of a number of swords belonging to either of the empires within the above mentioned centuries, followed by their morphological evaluation presented in analytical tables, this article will conclude that the state religions within each territory had a significant impact on both the theme of engraved wordings, and the decorations on swords, resulting in distinguishing characteristics. However, the exchange between weapon-making artisans and trading weaponry created common features of weapon production in both empires. Nevertheless, Persian tradition of simplicity in design versus Ottoman style with massive decoration all over the swords is considered a salient dissimilarity of Persian and Ottoman swords.

This paper aims to explain the role of Absurd Theatre, as an innovative form of dramatic composition in the first half of the 20th century, in evolving novels and literary traditions after 1960s. The main problem of this research is finding some reliable limits of mutual impacts by which it could be possibly said that Absurd Theatre and New Novels had many interchangeable effects through the time. The key question is how Absurd devices have had an impact on the style of novel writing, if it could be claimed that this type of theatre had emerged at the period of a historical passage into Postmodernism from Modernism. Inspired by an evolutional structuralism method, this study intends to describe the key factors of mutual stylistic interactions between Nouveau Novels and Absurd Drama. To this purpose, a statistical population of recognized writers and dramatists has been selected to realize a comparative reading of their features. Focusing on some masterpieces of Samuel Beckett and Marguerite Duras’ novels, the comparison confirms how these movements influenced on each other and how it would be possibly rearranged and re-interpreted today. The features such as Deviation of Norms and Styles, Humanism as well as Scientism are among the most important criteria that prove the main hypothesis of the research. They are basically literary devices or approaches which have transferred to theatre and performance. The paper first reviews the historical evolution of Modern Literature and shows how modern style of telling stories influenced on some other types of artistic forms. It explains that Absurd Drama was significantly inspired by modern approaches of European literary criticism. The “Estrangement effect” of Epic Theatre and “Defamiliarization” of Formalist poetics are two of the main reasons of emerging Absurd techniques during 1930s. The research summarizes then the key features of Modern Novels at a tentative table and presents some operational descriptions for subsequent assessment. It will finally prove that the literary focus on Body and Movement, Claustrophobical arrangement of fictional scenes, and Performative aspects of language are all made under influence of Absurd devices. In effect, it could be said that Absurd drama developed literary language of New Novels in terms of performability and theatricality.

To express religious and mythic themes and overcome gaps between conscious and unconscious part of his mind, human being needs symbol and symbolization. Symbols appear in different forms such as dreams, folk tales, myths, natural objects and arts. In architecture, the application of symbols is the strongest and the most expressive from of all arts. Today, symbolic language, in architecture, has become the same as impartial and negative terms and the wittnessing relationships denoting the definition not only is not a factor to improve its interactions in space but also has changed to self-alienation. This article is trying to answer the question whether it is possible to express the concept of ascension emanated through architectural framework through finding archetypal semantic commonalities existing in the human ego and which consists of three sources as the universal myths, symbol and dream? This concept is the only one model in archetypal concepts therefore with finding the remaining concepts derived from the archetypes can be reached the pattern language in architecture to upgrade the human interaction with architectural space and designers and architects could use this language as a timeless and eternal way and apply other factors affected by context and styles of architecture as spatiotemporal ones.