asma hosseini moghadam

Shirin and Farhad by Salimi Jerouni, composed in the ninth century AH, is adapted from Khosrow and Shirin by Nizami Ganjavi. The distinguishing feature of this poem is the addition of a mystical theme, as compared to its hypotext. The purpose of the current study was to investigate how the narrative structure of this poem has changed compared to Nizami Ganjavi’s Khosrow and Shirin, employing Gerard Genette’s theory of hypertextuality and also intentional interpretation. The researchers have also tried to show how Salimi Jerouni was able to connect his mystical thoughts with Khosrow and Shirin’s earthly love. Based on epitext and peritext analysis and through retrieval of the intention of the author, it was concluded that Salimi Jerouni had created a narrative, using quantitative transformation and pragmatic transformation that in its deep structure, illustrated mystical behavior. The characters of the story have gained symbolical interpretation, proportional to the mystical content of the poem and in line with the evolution of the hero (Khosrow) on the way of reaching the position of a perfect man.

Applying discourse analysis as the research method, this paper analyzes Shirin’s characterization and its change in two different stories (Shahnameh, and Khosrow and Shirin) in order to show how the lingual and meta-lingual (social, political, cultural and historical status) factors besides the ideology of the authors (Ferdowsi and Nezami) have influenced the representation of her character. Furthermore, this paper focuses on the change of political and cultural discourse from the period of Samanids to the Seljuks and the alternation of the views towards women -Ferdowsi’s misogynist views in contrast to Nezami’s philogynist views- as the other possible factor which have influenced Shirin’s characterization. According to this paper, Shirin’s image in Shahnameh is simultaneously negative and positive which is the result of class ideology plus power relations which have dominated Ferdowsi’s text, while in Khosrow and Shirin, the character of Shirin changes because of the change of genre and Nezami’s ideological involvement with this especial character of his story. Accordingly, in Nezami’s version, Shirin is not a Roman slave but an Armenian princess.

The monumental and eminent characters are the most important narrative elements in Nezami`s narratives-in-verse that have caused acceptability of them and have created tend to imitation and Repeat of them among the many narrators. We are going to analyze Khosrow`s characteristics features in this study. This study is based on the theory of semantic axes and a combination of the theories of Barthes, Hrushovski, Mieke Bal, etc has been applied as well. The results of this paper manifest that Khosrow is a multidimensional character and his attributes include multiple and sometimes conflicting that his most prominent feature is lechery. Also the results of this paper prove that Khosrow is a round and dynamic character and this is a factor for influence and persistence of this character in literature.

Nezami’s narratives-in-verse are of high importance for their monumental and eminent characters. This study intends to analyze the methods applied by Nezami while characterization. Accordingly، three of his fictional characters are chosen to be studied، including: Khosrow، Bahram and Alexander who are all alike in the case of being kings. According to this study which has applied descriptive and statistical methods، it is shown that Nezami، unlike the many classic story-tellers، has utilized the indirect presentation much more than the direct definition and his own methods of characterization has a direct correlation with the temper and moods of his characters. Nezami had a constant progress in the field of characterization and his most perfect characterization can be found in Sharafname.