فهرست مطالب مسلم ذوالفقارخانی

Through using different vehicles and implements, poets and authors in the School of Naturalism could reflect life’s events and its circumstances in detail. Among the most significant subjects and topics propounded in this school are war, poverty, prostitution, bloodshed, and murder. Naturalists are poets and authors who reveal life as it is and insist on the ugly faces and aspects of life to indicate how human beings are useless creatures who are surrendered to genetics and the environment. This study uses naturalistic qualities and common themes found in War Poetry to compare the poetry of two renowned poets, Qeysar Aminpour from Iran and Wilfred Owen from England. For this, “A Poem for the War” composed between 1979 and 1984 by Aminpour and “Dulce et Decorum Est” (1920) by Owen are selected among others. The major qualities examined in this article are as follows: the descriptive details of war and its circumstances; the use of simple and colloquial language; cacophony, and harsh and tough language; and the picture of war’s indecencies, ugliness, and terrors. Results reveal that war poetry in England is basically anti-war, although some epic-tone and passionate poems were written by poets such as Robert Brook and Siegfried Sassoon at the beginning of the First World War, however, war poetry in Persian rests on mysticism and it is epic-tone. Nevertheless, in both poetry, war is viewed as cruel, painful, and full of Naturalistic qualities.

The present study aims at revealing Rhetoric in Persian and English language and literature and discussing its major classifications by rhetoricians, while emphasizing “Prologue” in Shahnameh and “Invocation” in Paradise Lost. To do this, some of the most significant contemporary books on Persian and English Rhetoric and literary devices are analyzed, and simultaneously those approximate literary devices such as Prologue, Invocation, Foreshadowing, Prolepsis and Apostrophe are compared and contrasted. The results of this research indicate that Persian and English literary devices are not always identical while sometimes seem to be incompatible. This incongruity refers to the nature of their languages and literary text along with poets’ methods of utterances and expositions. Further, the vague equivalents and lexicographers’ negligence aggravated such incongruity. The method employed in this research is descriptive and analytical. Besides, the American School of comparative studies in which direct influences are not insisted, are followed in order to reveal Prologue and Invocation in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh and John Milton’s Paradise Lost and to identify their approximate literary devices.

Ecocriticism in literature concentrates on literature and the environment or the Nature; it means it focuses on literature and the physical environment. Such study calls for collaboration between natural scientists, writers, literary critics, anthropologists, historians, and other disciplines. Poets and authors have always been under the influences of the world around and the environment so that nature changed to be a source of inspiration to them.

Ecocriticism and Environmental literary studies were first introduced to the world of literature in 1970 in world’s most important assembly “The Western Literature Association” (WLA). After the Industrial revolution, human being transformed his connection with nature and started to experience a new season in his life. The earlier connection was based on a mutual relationship, but the new one was entirely shifted to something far from a mutual link. In other words, after the Industrial revolution, human being occupied an upper position and nature suffered from a banal one. Incidentally, the ecocritics enjoy various methods of analysis in their studies; some believe that nature is not more than a humanized structure which some poets like William Wordsworth started to form in their works. Many of these critics put nature as a counterpart of culture, or identify nature as instinct. Instinct is the main inner motive which transfers its effects to other creatures. It is identified with nature or the animal’s desire to do profitable deeds.

The present study attempts to reveal ecocritical works and thoughts of two most significant Persian and American poets/authors, Nimā Yushij (1897-1960) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). To do this, the poetry and the letters of Nimā together with Emerson’s book titled Nature (1836) have been selected. It is indicated how Nimā and Emerson’s idealism is closely related to nature, and how it is based on Human-God-Nature-Justice circle. It is shown that nature is the major source of this circle. Hence, the present study, by the use of American School of Comparative studies, while applying a library-analytical approach, tries to compare and contrast the major thoughts of Nimā Yushij and Ralph Waldo Emerson due to their literary environmental writings. Furthermore, it is emphasized that these two poets belong to different languages and literatures; however, as far as the American School is based on Eclecticism in comparative studies, it is hoped that the major nature-oriented themes and ideas of these poets might be revealed in this essay. It should be also considered that the American School of comparative studies does not concentrate only on the effects or influences in literary studies; to such school, literary movements, genres and literary types, and the topics and themes of world literature are the fundamental spots of studies.

The study discloses how Emerson’s outlook to nature is more philosophical than Nimā’s. When he talks about nature his idealistic motives start to appear. Both poets insist on the unity of human being and nature by unifying human history and natural history. The beauty of nature is another major theme of their poetry; both look at nature as the source of beauty and its pleasures. Emerson believes that the ultimate end of the cosmos is a desire to the beauty. Why human being is so much interested in the beauty is beyond the thoughts and logics of man. Furthermore, Nimā’s ecocritical tendencies are closely related to coexistence of man and nature, and the poet’s thoughts are not separated from the beauties of nature and its inspiration. Nature, environment, and the world around are at the core of both Nimā and Emerson’s thoughts and writings. To live naturally and to get involved with nature are their ideal way of life. To them, solitude and primitivism are man’s solution to release him/her from the chains of society. Both of them complain about human being’s distance from nature; they believe that solitude is mankind’s opportunity to conform his/her soul to nature.

Comparing the long-life Persian ghazal with the short-life but productive English sonnet, one discerns the slow and continuous development of ghazal on the one hand, and the rapid change of sonnet in a short period of time on the other. English sonnet has its own history back in the Middle Ages when lyric poetry was growing immediately after the Old English verse. Ghazal has been approached differently and critics are inclined to divide it based on topic, history, and style. Therefore, in one taxonomy it is amorous or mystic, in another it is classified based on the historical assumptions. Razmju, after giving a comprehensive historical judgment, refers to its major origin (Razmju, 2011: 86-9). In short, lyrics were initiated in the Persian poetry right with the emergence of Dari language in the ninth century. The oldest form of it can be observed in the poetry of Hanzale ye Bādqisi (d. 219/850).  In the tenth century, the cultivation of ghazal was manifested, and both Rudaki and Shahid e Balḵi (d. 325/935) composed elegant lyrics and amorous poetry. Later at the beginning of the Eleventh century, Farroḵi ye Sistāni (d. 429/1037) assimilated ghazal with Taghazzol so that in the succeeding century ghazal evolved into a new accepted style by great poets such as Sanā’i (d. 545/1134), Mawlānā (d. 672/1273), Attār (d. 618/1221), and Irāqi (d. 688/1289). Gradually, the division of amorous/mystic became increasingly apparent. The culmination of amorous ghazal was with Sa’di (d. 691/1292) while the bloom of mystic ghazal was with Mawlānā. Then, the integration of these two was flourished in the fourteenth century most well-known poet Hāfez (d. 792/1390).European sonnet, accompanying the English one, owes its existence to the Italian poetic heritage of the thirteenth century. In the mid-fourteenth century, Petrarch (d. 1374) occupied a significant place in the Italian love poetry. The new form of sonnet came to other European countries in the following centuries. Hence, some bibliographers tend to call the sixteenth century Europe the arena of sonnet (Vaganay, 1966: xv). English sonnet spread across the literary aura roughly between 1580 and 1600. England, in the sixteenth century, found sonnet as a new-born form and many poets attempted to experience the novel genre. In this research, a sonnet by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and a ghazal by Vahshi Bafghi (1532-1583) were selected to be compared and contrasted in order to indicate and reveal Persian Vasookht and English Anti-Petrarchan lyricism.

This article aims at comparing two schools of lyricism in Persian and English Poetry, Vasookht and Voqu (Ocurrence-telling) and Anti-Petrarchism. The research aims at applying a descriptive-analytical approach while insisting on American school of comparative studies and positing Veselovsky’s historico-cultural comparative theory which reveals how world literatures are closely related to each other though they are not directly influenced by.

Both ghazal and sonnet with their well-made exquisite structure, miniature and elegant form, and complex content are the excellent literary genres where one may perceive in them common aspects and proportions. Among these aspects are the topics of “Vasookht” or turning from the beloved in Persian ghazal and anti-Petrarchism in English sonnet. Ghazal in Persian poetry, undoubtedly, occupies a significant place and enjoys a long history comparing the English sonnet. Vasookht in Persian poetry was a much more complicated phenomenon which depended on many social and political factors; the most important ones are: objectivism and avoiding subjectivity of the earlier Iraqi School; disclosing lover’s real emotions and sentiments; emphasizing realities and making believe; insisting earthly and terrestrial love; grossness and vulgarity in language; informal and colloquial speech; expressing same-sex-love openly; uttering real emotions of anger and hate.  Incidentally, Vasookht had its own social and political dimensions; some of the most important ones are: Solidarity in politics, economics, religion, and culture in Safavid period and helping the poets to show a more dependent picture of themselves and their high expectations in ghazals;  the influences of the Indian culture on Persian ghazal which established a new lover-beloved speaker; emphasis on objectivism in poetry and avoiding the abstract ideas and the ideal heavenly love common in earlier periods of ghazal; ghazal approached the public, and new poets of lower classes of Iranian society started to compose lyrics and consequently a new mode of language and speech was shaped in ghazals. Furthermore, English sonnet moved fast in its alteration and witnessed rapid changes in mode and conventions. Indeed, the Renaissance in Europe and England was a vast phase and complicated era of experiencing various forms and styles. In poetry, also alterations were prompt and poets were deeply involved in the trends. Persian Vasookht and English anti-Petrarchism share some common features; however, their causes are not necessarily the same. English sonneteers did not follow the continent’s major lyricists in retaining romantic tradition due to their expectations and ideals. Based on what pursued in this research, the English anti-Petrarchism rests on some factors which are mostly related to the English literary taste and character. Some of these factors are: the un-Petrarchan convention was rooted in the English culture even before the rise of Petrarchism in the English Renaissance; the contradictory articulation of praise and blame in the English sonnet seems to be a site of English complicated and vague spirit and talent; Petrarchism and anti-Petrarchism in English sonnet do not embody a clear-cut distinction.

Both Persian and English lyrics witnessed metamorphosis in depicting the beloved in the course of their developments. Change of lover/poet’s accounts of the beloved fell upon the lyric tradition of both Persian Vasookht ghazal (Turning from the beloved) and English anti-Petrarchan sonnets. Persian ghazal, the full-fledged amorous poems, went through “Maktab-e Woqu” (Occurrence-telling) at the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when poets tended to reveal their true emotions based on the realities and facts surrounding them. Vasookht was a subgenre of Maktab-e Woqu in which the despaired and provoked lover/poet left praising the beloved and began to blame and humiliate her/him. Besides, many of the English poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries drew at a beloved far from the Petrarchan ideals, deflated romantic tradition of love, and anti-Petrarchism was established in English poetry. Thereby this article attempted to posit a historico-cultural re-vision of Vasookht in Persian ghazal and anti-Petrarchism in English sonnet while clarifying some of their most significant cultural aspects.  

In Modern Persian literature, the most serious and influential feminism occurs in Forough Farrokhzad’s poetry. She is the first Persian female poet who disclosed her womanist desires in a feminine, pure, and humble language while illustrating world of women in contemporary Iran. The goal of this article is to explore Woman/nature traces in Forough Farrokhzad’s poetry. Therefore, the following themes and issues which may help to connect her thoughts and language to nature are presented: “The Nature Ontology”, “The Seasons and Time Passage, “The Four Major Elements in Nature”, “The Tree and The Plant”, and “The Earth and The Sky Creatures”. Attempts are made to investigate how these themes are interwoven in Farrokhzad’s poetry, and how she had been indirectly under the influences of such feminist tendencies in the world of literature. Hence, an analysis of Woman and Nature in Forough Farrokhzad’s Nature Poetry reveals her thoughts and ideas as one of the most significant Persian Modern poets. This research applies an analytical-qualitative method and uses a descriptive-library approach. 

Nature has been one of the most significant subjects in literary discussions. Ecocriticism and Green studies in literature of the East and the Western/European literary orientations were always important subjects. Landscapes, nature descriptions and nature elements, such as the mountains, the plains, the ocean, the woods, and the rocks have been always under the attention of poets and authors. Sometimes these nature descriptions were to praise the nature and its fundamental aspects like the seasons and time changes, other times to reveal the poets’ inner moods and emotions and his/her sentimental reflections. The nature ontology, the seasons and time passage, the four major elements in nature, the plants, and the earth and the beast have direct connection with human life. In other words, human life is meaningful when it is accepted within the environment and the outer world; consequently, the reflection of this outer world is eminent and considerable in literary texts and poetry.

It is true that most of the critics consider four major movements for Feminism: the first movement insisted on the rights of the women and the suffrage; the second movement searched equalities for both men and women; and the third movement concentrated on the cultural and academic institutions. Finding women’s real social places and ranks, supporting social equalities and political/economical equalities, releasing the women in a patriarchal society are all among the most significant basics of the European Feminist current. Elaine Schowalter, a well-known feminist theoreticians speaks of two feminist tendencies: 1. Studying literary texts and analyzing the picture of women in them; 2. Evaluating the female poets/authors as the creators of literary texts, and deciding whether there are some differences between the male poets’ interest and those of the female ones (Schowalter, 1988: 346). This essay insists on the first tendency and attempts to follow such an outlook, which means criticizing literary texts from women’s viewpoints. Thus, the aim of this research is to find out the reflections of nature, women’s identities, and the nature-oriented tendencies of a female poet, Forough Farrokhzad, who like ecocritics thinks of nature-destruction and decadence, and worries about the women’s exploitations in the society. The ecocritics or the nature-oriented-critics believe that both women’s social exploitations and the nature destruction are the results of a hierarchical society where the role of women becomes more and more weak and unimportant. Consequently, this research, while using analytical-qualitative method and applying a descriptive-library approach, attempts to disclose the thoughts and the inner emotions of a female poet in Persian modern poetry.

Forough Farrokhzad’s volumes of poetry, Re-birth (1343) and Trusting the Dawn of a Cold Season (1343) reveal the common pain the poet and the nature suffering from; a lonely lady who is suffering from a cold and icy society while melting in a gloomy atmosphere: At the beginning of a cold season/ At the beginning of the perception of the polluted existence of earth/ And the simple damp despair of heaven (Farrokhzad, 1386: 317). The wind blows in the alley/ The wind blows in the alley/ And I think of flowers breeding/ And buds on vestigial stalks (Farrokhzad, 1386: 318). Will I ever again comb my tresses in the wind?/ Will I ever again plant violets in flowerbeds?/ Will I ever again leave the geraniums in the sky beyond the window? (Farrokhzad, 1386: 323). She thinks that the life is a simple dream and hallucination, and immediately a self-destruction and nature-decadence are remembered: Excuse her/ She who at times forgets/ her close painful connection/ with the stagnant waters/ and the empty holes/ and foolishly thinks/ the right of living (Farrokhzad, 1386: 231). Forough seeks shelter among her own simple fellow, those who are also perfect and worthy: Give me shelter, oh simple perfect women following/ With your slender fingertips/ The delightful movement of a fetus beneath the skin (Farrokhzad, 1386: 281). Woman/nature traces and the reflection of nature in these two volumes of poetry and Forough’s earlier poems are significant due to these topics: “The Nature Ontology”, “The Seasons and Time Passage, “The Four Major Elements in Nature”, “The Tree and The Plant”, and “The Earth and The Sky Creatures”. Every one of these subjects can be applied in the poet’s personal, social, mental, and philosophical areas, so that when facing the nature, Forough Farrokhzad joins her, involves in her, sympathizes with her, and finally familiarizes and unifies with her.

One of the most beautiful imaginaries in Persian poetry is the changing that the poets make in inanimate objects in their environment while giving them movement and soul. A primitive kind of living and the nature, their connections and relationship, were the major factors for such tendencies in absorbing the natural phenomena in their poetry. Then such interests resulted in the brilliant pictures of nature elements in Persian poetry. Consequently, “Personification” as a literary device has been widely used in Persian classical poetry to personify the inanimate objects and the natural phenomena. Among the traditional Persian poets one can remember Manuchehri Damghani, Farrukhi Sistani, Rudaki, and Unsuri Balkhi who described the nature in their poetry and reflected her widely; that is why Manuchehri is called the encyclopedia of the nature in Persian poetry. In Modern Persian poetry one can remember Forough Farrokhzad, Mehdi Akhavān-Sāles, Nimā Yushij, and Sohrab Sepehri who also kept in mind the nature while writing their poetry. Subjects and issues like “The Nature Ontology”, “The Seasons and Time Passage, “The Four Major Elements in Nature”, “The Tree and The Plant”, and “The Earth and The Sky Creatures” indicate how Forough Farrokhzad’s thoughts and language are extensively connected with nature. She is considered as one of the most eminent female poets who cared for the women’s real rights in Modern Iranian society. The following themes and issues highlight Forough’s major woman/nature tendencies: “The Nature Ontology”, “The Seasons and Time Passage, “The Four Major Elements in Nature”, “The Tree and The Plant”, and “The Earth and The Sky Creatures”. In her poetry, nature has an idealistic, pure, and feminine meaning, and the time is the symbol of development and growth; every four major elements of nature are a pattern for human’s ontology (the water is the symbol of life, purification, rebirth, feminine characteristics, and matriarchal power; the fire refers to fertility, purification, and the illumination; the wind shows creation and fertility; and the soil presents the life and the abundance). Also the vegetable in Forough’s poetry stand for birth and life-death circle, and the trees indicate life and the association of the woman and the earth; all these are widely present in Forough Farrokhzad’s almost every line of poetry.

This study aims at discussing Bayhaqi’s History and the execution presented in the book under Michel Foucault’s patterns in Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (1977). Therefore, the major aim of this paper is to pursue torture, torment, power, and punishment in Bayhaqi’s History based on what Foucault expounded in his analytical book. In his writing of »The Execution of Hasanak the Vizier, Peace be upon him«, Abu’l-Fadl Bayhaqi attempts to present a dramatic history and to reveal an execution rite in Ghaznavid Period of Iranian history. Text analyses under the modern theories which are the products of the new world and its complicated societies never carry contemporary reader to the old time, but bestows new and fresh outlooks to the text and increases the pleasures of reading. Bayhaqi’s History, written by Abu’l-Fadl Muhammad ibn Husayn Bayhaqi (died in 1077), is a living and documentary book which enjoys literary and historical merits, and consequently demands social and sociological reviews and evaluations.

Macha Louis Rosenthal (1917-1996) for the first time introduced the term Confessional Poetry in his study on Robert Lowell’s Life Studies (1959), a volume of poetry. Among the most significant properties of Confessional Poetry are the outcry of inner feelings and emotions, depicting hidden desires and aspirations, revealing personal and family privacies, presenting particular real names of people and places, using simple and lucid language, Verisimilitude, and finally attracting reader’s confidence toward the text and its atmosphere. Such motifs can be traced in many Persian modern poets such as Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980). Sepehri’s »The Sound of Water’s Steps« and Robert Lowell’s »My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereux Winslow« are two typical pieces of confessional poems which are discussed and reviewed in this article. Hence, by comparing and presenting details of confessions in their two selected poems, this research attempts to unfold their anxieties as modern poets and to clarify their mental stream of confessions.

Apocalyptic literature appeared to disclose human’s anxieties in a complicated world. The present study aims at indicating roots of such a literature and displaying the so called Apocalyptic poetry at the Modern age. Hence, this study, while emphasizing American school of Comparative Literature, focuses on two patterns: one is genres and forms, and the other is motifs and types. It is attempted to reveal how Ahmad Shamloo (1925-2000) and William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) came across such a genre in their poetry, and what were their major attitudes toward it. Apocalyptic issues and concepts are various, but this study wished to concentrate on the most distinguished ones in Ahmad Shamloo’s »Journey« and William Butler Yeats’s »The Second Coming«; they are: revelation and poetic contemplation; prevision and exhortation; millennium and end of history; rough language. The results indicates that both poets were familiar with this genre, and far from being influenced or putting influences on each other, the motifs of Apocalyptic literature were strongly present in their selected poems.

New Novel (or nouveau roman) resulting from society’s desires and expectations in mid-20th century, first rose in France, and then extended to other countries, and Iran as well. Hence, novelists like Hushang Golshiri (1938-2000) and Bahram Sadeqi (1937-1984) joined the New Novel current. Sadeqi wrote his short stories between 1956 and 1971, and his »The Trench and the Empty Canteens« (1970) is a typical example of New Novel in Persian literature. The book includes twenty-four short stories, from which »A Gloomy Verse for a Moonless Night« was selected to be reviewed based on Formalist and Structuralist approaches. This research aims at disclosing some linguistic and narrative features of Bahram Sadeghi’s texts, in order to reveal first the New Novelists’ techniques, and then to discuss this so called new style of Persian prose in the 20th century. Hence, based on these approaches, this article attempts to discover some narrative techniques and also to show how the Structuralist approaches might open the texts and present the inner linguistic phenomena of these texts.

Ecocriticism, which studies the relationship between literature and ecology, is one of the less-known but worthy of research fields of study among interdisciplinary studies. Ecocriticism could be considered as a return to the view that fosters the interrelationship between the reader, the text, and the external world and is a reaction to Postmodernism and Post-structuralism. Ecocriticism has its links to the social and intellectual movement of Feminism which strives to improve the status of women in society. One of the feminist movements which focuses on the causes of the destruction of nature and earthly environment and also guards against the exploitation of women in society is Eco-feminism, which connects Ecocriticsm to Feminism, and has the central notion that the exploitation of women in society originates from male-dominated world and the decline of the status of women and nature. The most significant question for which Feminism attempts to find an answer is to what extent men are legible to speak on behalf of women in literary texts. Hence, Feminism led to Feminist Literary Criticism. In Modern Persian Literature, the most serious and influential Feminist Criticism could be seen in Forough Farrokhzad’s poetry. She is the first Persian female poet who frankly disclosed her feminist desires and hopes in a feminine, pure, and humble language while illustrating the world of women in contemporary Iran. The goal of this study is to explore Ecofeminist traces in Forough Farrokhzad’s poetry. Therefore, the following themes and issues which may help to connect her thoughts and language to nature are presented: “The Nature Ontology”, “The Seasons and Time Passage”, “The Four Major Elements in Nature”, “The Tree and The Plant”, and “The Earth and The Sky Creatures”. The present study strives to see the extent to Nature is reflected in the thoughts and poetry of Forough Farrokhzad and to show her main concerns with respect to Nature and Ecology.