Manifestations of Iconic Syntax in Persian Free Verse Poetry: A Study Based on Richard Cureton’s Theoretical Framework

Iconic syntax provides a functional framework for exploring how different kinds of iconicity are realized in the syntactic structures of poetry. First introduced by Cureton (1980) to explain how the conceptual content of a clause can align with its syntactic form, this model can serve as a productive basis for studies of Persian poetics. Using this framework, the present study examines manifestations of iconic syntax in 104 poems of modern Persian free verse through a descriptive–analytical approach. The corpus include three collections: Hofreha (Holes) by Garous Abdolmalekian, Fifty-Three Love Lyrics by Shams Langeroudi, and Laughing in a Burning House. Each poem was analyzed clause by clause in two stages: first by identifying the conceptual content, and then by describing its syntactic configuration. The spatial and temporal relations between these two levels were assessed in the light of Cureton’s typology of iconicity. The findings reveal that spatial and structural relations between syntax and content often take the form of icons of existence, complexity, spatial contiguity, and disorder. Likewise, the temporal icons identified can be categorized as occurrence, temporal contiguity, movement, and intrusion. The boundaries between these types of icons and their modes of representation are often fluid; analyzing iconicity in poetry, therefore, involves tracing how intertwined formal and semantic layers interact to create converging perceptual effects on the reader.