پژوهشنامه ادبیات تعلیمی
پیاپی 48 (زمستان 1399)

One of the most pivotal foundations of Ferdowsi's thought along with the epic is didacticism. Because of this, Shāhnāmeh can be considered as a didactic book containing the ethics of the king's conduct. The vice and virtue in the poetry of this poet have a special manifestation. It would definitely be said that one of the main purposes of Shāhnāmeh is expressing merits and demerits, truth and falsehood, obscenity and abomination. One of the goals of Ferdowsi's epic can be boldly considered to be the expression of truth and falsehood, good and evil. Examining the various dimensions of the Shāhnāmeh, including the atmosphere of protest, criticism and advice against the behavior of the kings, leads to a better understanding of the content of this work. This study tries to study the manifestations of moral vices and common anomalies in the behavior of the kings through a descriptive-analytical research and by using library study. The results of this study show that in different periods, kings have fallen into the moral degeneration and these moral vices are in various forms such as pride, inhumanity, greed, anger, religious impurity, distrustful, authoritarianism, lying, murder, threats and intimidation, destruction of dominion, and dozens of other ugly traits are reflected in their behavior. These improbities have serious consequences such as dissatisfaction, poverty and misery, loss of blessings, notoriety, destruction, public revolt for society, and ultimately the fall of the government. These behaviors, which are extracted from the text of Shāhnāmeh stories, have created a protest and critical atmosphere in Shāhnāmeh. In addition, advice and moral lessons at the end of the stories generated a didactic infrastructure.

The wisdom and correct understanding of the spiritual and psychological characteristics of human beings in the works of literary authors like Nezami is made their literary reflect various spiritual dimensions of human beings mainly in the form of the fictional characters. In this study, the character of Sedition in Haft Paikar (Seven Portrait), is probe into based on the technique of "self-compassion" in the field of positive psychology descriptively and analytically. The main question of the research is, was the purpose of Nezami in changing the destiny of Sedition to teach and show the effects of compassion on the human life and his destiny? How did Nezami save Sedition (the central figure) from the definite death of Colonel Bahram Shah by using self-compassion? The findings show that in Haft Paikar, all the elements of self-compassion have been appeared in behavior and manners of Sedition, the maid of Bahram Goor.

Attar Neyshabouri's moral views and words in Persian poetry and prose are valuable and worthy for further reflection and more research. Though the mythical and linguistics characteristics of Attar's works have been mainly focused on, the moral and and didactic issues of his works, especially in his Muṣībat-Nāme, have been less researched on. This article is going to perform a content and statistical analysis of Muṣībat-Nāme. The research seeks to answer the following questions: which themes, moral contents, and advice are more outstanding in Attar's mystical view in Muṣībat-Nāme? and is Attar's mysticism close to practical wisdom? Attar's concern was to elaborate virtues and warning and forbidding vices. Ethical and humanizing issues in educational and mystical literature are frequently recounted in the journey of the main character, i.e. Fekrat as a seeker. These themes were good temperament, fraternity, kindness, reflecting on afterlife and destiny, belief in mortality, forgiveness, justice of the king and ruler, love, servitude, modesty, trivializing the lust, avoiding lies and greed, invitation to fellowship and contentment, learning wisdom, sincerity, friendliness, despising the world, condemnation of the world and the self, observance of moderation in affairs, tolerance and patience. While narrating the mystical allegory of the journey for self-knowledge, Attar did not neglect the educational and moral anecdotes; And as far as possible, in the section of short anecdotes of this mystical prose, he considered ethics, moral virtues and preaching to follow them, condemning moral vices and avoiding from them. Another result of this research is that the expression of advice and educational topics of the short anecdote section in these forty essays (destination) is usually consistent with that section. For instance, during the narration of the seeker's journey to the soil, he spoke of humility and modesty, and during the journey to visit prophet Ibrahim (the God’s friend), he spoke of friendliness, fraternity and friendship. One important result of this research is that most of Attar's educational and advisory verses have been in short anecdotes and the sayings of Old man to Fekrat the seeker have more mystical aspects.

Mysticism and politics are two related categories that affect each other. The combination of the character of the king-ruler with the mystical perfect man is an instance of such influence. Seeking for the perfect human model, people attributed the Divine Farreh (a divine mystical force) and divine confirmation to the kings and considered the kings as the examples of this model. This model has similar characteristics with the model of the perfect man in theistic and non-theistic religions; including having Divine Farreh and being just, wise and sage. In this study, which is a content analysis study, the effect of mysticism on the formation of the image of perfect king-human has been studied in didactic texts (Qābus-Nāmeh, Siyāsatnāmeh (Book of Government), ‎Akhlāq-i Nāsirī (Nasirean Ethics), Saadi’s Gulestān and Soluk-olMoluk). The results indicated that Mystical attitude has played an important role in characterization of the king-ruler in non-mystical (or educational) texts. Accordingly, there are two different attitudes: 1. achievable perfect king-human; 2. unachievable perfect (or ideal) king-human. Based on results, the unachievable perfect king-human has only been considered in Solukol-Moluk.

Indian or Isfahani literary style is replete with various themes and colorful images. One of the outstanding poets of this literary style is Sāeb Tabrizi who has used various natural and unnatural phenomena in developing the themes and imageries of his works. In many cases, Sāeb has benefited the motivating and moral role of these themes and images to move the audience in doing virtue and avoiding the vice. In this article, which has been done by content analysis method, the theme of bubble in Sāeb's Divān (or collection of poems) has been analyzed. The question the research answered is that for illustrating which didactic purposes Sāeb has used the theme of bubble. The results of the study show that in addition to descriptive purposes and expressing lyrical and legal subjects and etc., Sāeb has also taken into account educational and didactic goals. Using the theme of bubble in thematic development and imagery, Sāeb has led his audience to silence, avoidance of vanity, arrogance, nonsense, guilt, relying on the mortal world and fleeting life, and so on.

Critics in every society have rights that are sometimes overlooked. The way the rulers treat this group is full of moral and educational teachings that is considered in Iḥyā′ ‘Ulūm al-Dīn. The life of the rulers, their character, and their insight in the face of the critics in Ghazali's Iḥyā′ ‘Ulūm al-Dīn is a mirror in which these instructive teachings are well represented. In this work, Al-Ghazali explains the didactic teachings by enumerating the moral virtues and vices of religious and non-religious rulers in the face of critics. Religious rulers in this study include the Prophet (PBUH), some infallibles (peace be upon them) and the righteous caliphs and non-religious rulers, including some Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs. This research has been done by descriptive method and content analysis. Four volumes of Ghazali's Iḥyā′ ‘Ulūm al-Dīn have been examined in which the good and reprehensible characteristics of rulers in the face of critics have been analyzed, then the religious and non-religious reactions of rulers have examined separately, aftermath the moral teachings of these approaches have been investigated. sound moral qualities include politeness, forgiveness, patience, prayer to guide critics, tolerance and criticism, whereas reprehensible moral qualities were anger, impatience, harassment, torture, and murder. Due to its novelty, the subject of this research can still be appealing, practical, and valuable for the society.

In Iranian culture, justice has always been emphasized and it has been reflected in pre-Islamic literature in the form of advice letters. The etiquette of the kings, such as the Siasatnāmeh, the Qāboos, and the Nasihatolmolook were written under the influence of pre-Islamic works and culture, and expressed the same themes in the form of concepts and metaphors. The present study examines the conceptual metaphors of "justice" and "oppression" from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. In this research, an attempt has been made to extract the conceptual metaphors of justice and oppression based on Lycaf and Johnson's theory of conceptual metaphor in the three mentioned literary works and to analyze them by using Fairclough method. The findings of this study show that the major origins are related to nature, ethics, wisdom and religion and these metaphors rooted in the ancient Iranian ideas that believed in two sources of good and evil. The importance of these materials in the religious thought of Iranians led them use religious and non-religious books, including letters of advice, and to the literary and moral works such as Siasatnāmeh, the Qāboos, and the Nasihatolmolook later on in the Islamic Period. The concept of justice and oppression, as one of the most significant ideas of ancient Iran, survived in the form of conceptual metaphors and the cultural and religious theme of the ancient Iranians passed on to next generations are given in this study.