فصلنامه ادب پژوهی
پیاپی 3 (پاییز 1386)

This paper intends to study the theoretical principles and methodological issues of the traditional rhetoric in order to uncover the weak and strong points of the rhetorical system in analyzing the literary discourse as regards to its splendor and artistic effect. The first part of the article discusses the principles of rhetoric among which: postulating the two poles, true and figurative, for the world and the language; distinguishing "signifier" from "signified"; searching for definite and ultimate meanings; priority of clarity over ambiguity; narrow imagination as concerned to the sensual perception; ideological basis; neglecting the role of context and adopting an atomistic outlook toward words or sentences; graphocentrism. The second part examines the problematic strategies and tactics used by rhetoricians which, in a general look, seem to confine the area of the activity of rhetoric. These problems are as follows: priority of poetry over other literary forms; ignoring the language change and the aesthetic taste of time; lack of research in literary texts; scholastic character of rhetoric; copying, and avoiding any critique on the ideas of the predecessors. As such the paper concludes that rhetoric, in its traditional form, fails to maintain the ever-changing needs of creative imaginations and motivated talents; therefore there is no other way but to change the traditional methods and ideals, if a practical and efficient rhetoric is expected.

Hermeneutics – either regarded as science, art, methodology or skill – has a great influence, in our time, on various areas of human knowledge due to its long history and development.Hermeneutics has gone through several stages and has followed different tendencies, but in all these, the focal point has been the reader's "understanding" of the text. The structural feature of "understanding" is considered to be its circularity, known as "hermeneutic circle". "Understanding" is, by nature, referential and cyclical, because in order to know the whole, one is to know the constituents of the whole, as well as the constant interrelation of the parts and the whole. This cyclical movement is dynamic and adaptable; therefore, far from being a vicious circle, it suggests countless possibilities for reading, interpreting and comprehending the texts and possesses the capacity of opening a dialogue with all the linguistic insights, literary theories and philosophical schools.This paper, apart from carrying out a general review on various trends in hermeneutics, introduces the different interpretations of hermeneutic circle, its historical background and the ways and areas of its application.

According to Husserl's phenomenology, "things" do not have any presence independent of man. In fact the real concept of "things" is a function of our communicating with them. Phenomenology tries to call our attention to the "origin of things", but this is impossible unless we are referred to the "essence" of things. In this process our sensual-perceptual relation to the things is of special importance, because our understanding of things takes form without any cognitive presupposition.On the basis of the above-mentioned sensual-perceptual understanding, a kind of existential and ontological semio-semantic approach replaces the already dominant semiotics which possesses a formalist and structuralist character. Signs are then no longer the mechanical entities to depend on the interaction of signifier and signified and it will be thus impossible for the semiology to be self-contained, because the "sign" finds its meaning not as it is, but as perceived by man and according to his situation in a phenomenal context. This evolution owes its existence to what Greimas calls "existential deficiency", and it is indeed for the reason of compensating this deficiency that "discourse" turns out to be a context for phenomenal and instantaneous experience of the speaker of "things" as they are manifested to him.This paper is to determine not only the function of phenomenology in the sign-related studies but also its contribution to the emerging of the sensual-perceptual semio-semantics out of classic semiology.

The writings of Said Nafisi, so far as the researches on Nizâmi's works are concerned, are of notable significance. Nafisi was the first to document his works with biographical information picked up from Nizâmi's poems and tried his best, on the basis of his findings, to start writing an authentic biography of this poet. In his later researches, Nafisi completed his primary work through compiling and collating Nizâmi's poems. A close look on Nafisi's books makes clear that his attempts has opened a new horizon in the task of writing biographies about Nizâmi, in a way that his works can be counted among the most reliable references on this great poet.This paper, through examining Nafisi's researches on Nizâmi and comparing it briefly with the works of other researchers, studies the strategies and techniques of Nafisi in textual criticism of Nizâmi's Divân.

The mythical personages studied in this article fall into three categories: Heroes, Fairies and Divinities. We have tried to draw an analogy among the three categories in the Persian and Russian mythology. In this comparison the points of similarity between the legends of Siagalesh and Lesh (Leshi), the epics of Rostam and Iliâ Murâmetz, and the myths of Mithrâ and Dâzhbog, Zahâk and Triglâvâ, Ahurâmazdâ and Bilbog, Ahriman and Chornbog, have been exhibited. Some of the likenesses seem to be accidental (like that between Lesh and Siâgalesh), but some others are rooted in the shared cultural heritage and racial origin of the two nations (like that between Ahurâ and Bilbog).This comparative report, influenced by the linguistic model of Noam Chomsky, attempts to trace out a deep structural analogy between the Persian and Russian myths and legends, although in some cases the mere reason of the influence of one legend on the other is its longer historical record.

Stylistics plays a significant role in many areas of literary researches, of which, the most important is supposed to be the literary criticism. A scientific typology of literary styles can doubtlessly facilitate the task of learning about styles.This paper is intended to be a critical study of prose writing typologies as presented in the Persian books on stylistics. Firstly, the classifications for writing prose are introduced from the standpoints of some researchers; secondly these classifications are commented and criticized. Our investigation itemizes the most important shortcomings of these typologies as follows: lack of the principles of classifications; weak definitions; paradoxical referents; confusing literary and non-literary prose; imprecise and inflexible categorizations; disregarding some style variants particularly the individual styles and microstyles; intermingling genres with styles; one-dimensional views toward styles; inexact determinations of stylistic elements and features; insufficient accounts of the methods of style analysis.

In the 20th century three major approaches to literary criticism were developed. They focused respectively on one of the constituents of meaning namely, writer, text and reader, and played their specific roles in the evolution of literary criticism. The first approach, considering the writer as the main source of the meaning, focuses on the biography of the writer to deeply understand what is going on in a text. The second approach essentially concerned with structuralism, studies the text and its structures to understand the aims of the narrator. The critics of the third group believe that the reader is the main reason for the writer to produce his book; therefore their criticism intends to understand the meaning of the text according to the reader's intentions and desires.This paper is to explain the views of the third group critiques whose philosophical base is phenomenology and they foreground, therefore, the reader's choice to interpret the text. In this way, the basis for any criticism, will be no more the single meaning of the text, but the personal interpretation of the reader.