نشریه اجتماعیات در ادب فارسی
پیاپی 5 (زمستان 1402)

Modernity is one of the most crucial concepts that has been generating questions, challenges, and astonishment since the Qajar period. The expression of astonishment in travelogues written by Iranian travelers is highly noticeable. Employing a qualitative and historical-interpretative approach, the present study is grounded in a sympathetic understanding of the travel writer’s intentions, with an emphasis on the potential selection of the binary relationship between the travel writer and interpreter. Considering the poverty, misery, and underdevelopment of Iran during the Qajar period compared to developed Europe, a fundamental question arises: How did Iranian travelers observe, experience, and narrate modernity in Europe? The current study focuses on exploring modernity and astonishment in the travel books of Iranian travelers who visited Europe. In the morphology of modernity as progress, it manifested in the form of renovation, urbanization, and industrialization. A state of astonishment for the travelers manifested in envy, explicit praise, incredulity, and amazement. The roots of astonishment are interconnected with three areas: ideas, politics, as well as culture and society. At the margins of astonishment, a critical perspective was encountered in spheres of religion and ethics, as well as in international and military politics.

Known as passivity, malady, and cancer, Black romanticism is one of the chief branches of romanticism. This type of romanticism has widely been present in prose and poetry since 28 Mordad coup d'état. Authors in this article endeavor to examine Nosrat Rahmani’s poetry to demonstrate the presence of black romanticism in mythical elements within Nosrat Rahmani’s poetry. Moreover, the article seeks to delve into the reasons behind this presence. Based on the findings of this article, the failure of the National Movement led to the shattering of Iranian intellectuals’ ideals. This gloomy disappointment after the coup d’état resulted in the emergence of black and pessimistic romanticism in Nosrat Rahmani’s poetry. Black romanticism manifests itself through motifs such as reflection of death, frustration, pessimism, treason, deriding of love, satanism, and gothic atmosphere. These themes play a prominent role in the recreation of mythical elements in Nosrat Rahmani’s poetry. As a result, the mythical elements such as Simorgh, Ghaf, Leili, Shirin, Bijan, and Hallaj are depicted as defeated and different from their former positive images due to the poet’s pessimism.

Web novels can play a central role in promoting lifestyles in the present time. Hence, this study aims to examine the lifestyle depicted in I Worry About You, one of the most popular web novels. To this end, this study has designed and examined this question: What are the key indicators of the Islamic Iranian lifestyle in I Worry About You? To address the research question, the current study benefits from library archives to analyze and quantify the distinct indices of the Iranian Islamic lifestyle. The study identifies five general and eight measurable indexes in the Iranian Islamic lifestyle. By employing the method of qualitative content analysis, the present study encoded and categorized web novels. The findings of the study have shown that the novel has conformed with the criteria of the Iranian Islamic lifestyle concerning family issues as well as acquiring knowledge, eschewing the promotion of ostentation, striving for a lawful livelihood, and honoring the dignity of society members. Moreover, the novel does not address spiritual matters and the belief in God. Finally, the novel does not align with the Iranian Islamic lifestyle in terms of its characters' relationships with unrelated and unfamiliar individuals.

Besides providing literary jouissance and entertainment, successful young adult fiction also pays attention to the educational aspect. In doing so, it paves the path for adolescents’ development as well as their entrance into social life. Fallibility and tolerance towards different viewpoints are significant instructive issues for adolescents while they move into their social lives. A Pizza Box for the Grilled Trapezoid by Jamshid Khanian is a notable novel dealing with epistemology and individual differences in the process of consciousness.  The novel narrates a small family’s short residence in an apartment full of weird events. Reading the novel, the readers formulate their hypotheses about the cause of these strange events and frequently reject them. As a result, the readers conclude that one cannot explain the whyness of events only by relying on the mind and experience. Employing a descriptive-analytical approach, the current study seeks to examine the fallibility of human beings as one of the fundamental principles of social life in the modern world in the novel under discussion. Accordingly, the idea of epistemic anxiety, seen as one of the intellectual foundations of the modern way of thinking, becomes the theoretical basis of the current study. The findings of the study indicate that the novelist brings to the fore the concept of epistemic anxiety by raising human beings’ fallibility in their perceptions along with its consequences, that is, readiness to constantly revise and reconstruct their beliefs and perspectives.

Holy defense poetry represents the significant subbranches of contemporary poetry emerging in a symmetrical relationship with the historical hypertext of the Iraq war against Iran. As the war concludes, holy defense poetry continues to evolve, shifting from the phenomenon-based approach to the consequence-based one. Thus, this time (1989-1990) can be called a transition period. The poetic movement of holy defense poetry is classified under the lyric poetry category. This period is an appropriate context for being influenced by the socio-historical hypertexts of the imposed war. The martyrdom of individuals, the return of prisoners of war, and the deviation of certain groups of people from the ideals of the Islamic revolution are three main three hypertexts. These hypertexts and their impacts on the community have the greatest influence on the formation of the genre of holy defense poetry after the war. This genre comprises three subgenres that have continued after the war.  They include the subgenre of mourning, the subgenre of description and veneration, and the subgenre of critiquing. In the subgenre of mourning, poets keep on the trend of composing elegy for the martyrs of holy defense war. In the subgenre of description and veneration, besides describing the war and the valor of warriors, poets venerated the prisoners of war released from Iraq’s jails. Lastly, in the subgenre of critiquing, the poets take on the mantle of society’s vigilant conscience monitoring the shortcomings. Then, they elaborate on these defects in their poetic discourse. Alireza Ghazveh, Simindokht Vahidi, and Majid Nezafat were highly productive poets of this genre after the war and Ghazal was the most common verse form in the examined period.

Esmaeel Shahroudi (Ayandeh/Future) and Nosrat Rahmani are two unique poets in Persian poetry, composing their poems in Nima’s style from the 1950s until the 1970s.  These poets are exceptional in contemporary Persian poetry because Nima Yooshij wrote an introduction to one of their collected verses. Accordingly, Nima’s introduction to Esmaeel Shahroudi’s Akharin Nabard (The Last Fight) and Nosrat Rahmati’s Kooch (Migration) merits attention. Nima’s introduction to Akharin Nabard is more comprehensive than his introduction to Kooch thereby deserving to be analyzed and scrutinized. The current study concentrates on Nima’s introduction to Akharin Nabard to answer the question: Which feature in Shahroudi’s poetry influenced Nima and prompted him to write an introduction to it? The analysis of Shahroudi’s introduction and its comparison with his introduction to Kooch illustrate that Shahroudi’s attention to people’s social lives and Argo (hidden and folk language) were highlighted in Nima’s introduction. From the angle of discursive analysis, Nima’s instruction is like a practical discourse that establishes Argo in contemporary [Persian] poetry.