Search published articles
Showing 6 results for Literary Discourse
Bahram Behin,
Volume 3, Issue 9 (5-2010)
Volume 3, Issue 9 (5-2010)
Abstract
The banishment of poets from Plato’s Republic in order to reach at a society free from irresponsibility is the first step in the Western speculative philosophy to criticize poetry. From a Platonic point of view, irresponsible, irrational writing, of which poetry, due to its inspirational nature, is an outstanding realization, puts the ideal Greek society in disorder and thus should be avoided; philosophically speculative writing, which arises from rationality and truth-orientated thinking, should replace it. Although it is almost impossible to examine the credibility of such judgments, they have been raised in different guises throughout history to explain crises in human societies. With a special attention to the modern era, this paper argues that due to the shortcomings in the Western “philosophical discourse,” Western philosophical writings seem to be really dangerous and the cause of political and social crises. Conversely, writings arising from a “literary discourse” might turn out to be more responsible.
Volume 9, Issue 36 (12-2012)
Abstract
One of the important features of literary discours, especially in the East, is the performance of ecstasy. From semio-semantic point of view, in the literary discourse, the ecstasy takes shape at the time when actions are in a secondary condition and is replaced with stress- emotional process in which free from its reactionary condition and under the glory and intention they experience one “more” abrupt “feasibly” topic. Actually, the ecstasy minimizes the distance between establishments in the border of action and crossing to a new semantic aura that accompanies with change or metamorphosis, to the extent that it encounters our literary discourse with knocking or an impulsive condition. In that case, what is the natural end of a process occurs in the beginning. By this reason, the ecstasy is a literary approach that disturbs all discourse assessments and away from every kind of rational and anecdotal chain, leads to unwariness and glorification. In fact, ecstasy is a situation where discourse topic puts it in a complete dismissal and in a way, it is absent that is a source of escape from bad actions of resistance.
Which are semio-semantic approaches of literary ecstasy?, how the literary ecstasy change actions to the time? how literary ecstasy provides the transcendent condition for discourse subject ?
With due attention to the above description, the purpose of this semio-semantic analysis of ecstasy in literary discourse is to explain the mechanisms that enable it to achieve a model that could review the production process of the literary ecstasy and its role in explaining the semantics .
Volume 10, Issue 4 (10-2019)
Abstract
By presenting the concept of Paratopy, Dominique Maingueneau gives a new definition of the relationships between text, author, and society in the analysis of literary discourse. According to Maingueneau, the creation of a literary text cannot solely be result and locus of the author's conflict with his/her society but are the consequences of the writer's presence in his/her context called Paratopy. According to him, paratopy is an essential condition for emergence of a literary text and the literary creation is a necessary criterion for paratopy's existence. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the paratopy's effect in literary discourse of two writers whom both narrated the same individual's life. Considering the importance of Hallaj in the field of Islamic mysticism, he has been constantly subject of many works. To clarify Hallaj's teachings and claims, the writers have also created narratives, describing his life. Louis Massignon and Abdul-Hussein Zarrinkoub in two works: The Passions of Hallaj and The Flames of Tour, despite using the same sources, as well as a relative agreement on the rightfulness of this Muslim mystic, have offered a rather different discourse of Hallaj's life. Understanding the reason for the attention of these two outstanding authors despite their different ideological backgrounds and approaches to historiography, as well as the differences between narrative and discourse of the two texts are questions that the authors have tried to answer. Therefore, with emphasis on Maingueneau's theories in this study, the authors examined the paratopy of the two writers and its manifestation in the two mentioned literary discourses in order to understand the genesis conditions of the two works, and also, through understanding their differences, come to a clearer reading of them.
Marzieh Lotfi, Ferdows Aghgolzadeh, Bahram Modarresi, Hayat Ameri,
Volume 13, Issue 50 (5-2020)
Volume 13, Issue 50 (5-2020)
Abstract
The absurd works include elements of wordplay, exaggerated clichés, repetition, irrelevant and even innovated phrases, uttered by one of the characters. The current study provides a narrative analysis of six selected literary works, namely "Endgame" and "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Becket, "The room" by Harold Pinter, "The Blind Owl" by Sadegh Hedayat and "The Cold Air" by Virgilio Pinera. By adopting a descriptive-analytic approach, this paper reconsidered narrative actants presented by Greimas (1966) and focused on six new narrative actants proposed by the researchers for analyzing the narrative of the selected absurd works. Narratology is a field of study that is undergoing a re-contextualization. Apart from theories such as Vladimir Propp’s actantial typology, absurdist theories of the self may also have influenced the way structuralist narratologists drew on linguistic theory to re-describe characters in stories as actants. The researchers proposed six new narrative actants that can be found in absurd works. They include sufferer (antihero) for hero, recluse for the receiver, repetition for the helper, failure for the object, partner for opponent. The donor is absent in absurd works and instead, oppressive can be considered as an actant in these literary works. In conclusion, it could be said that a more linguistically particularized account of actants may have significant methodological benefits for present-day researcher, interested in narrative analysis of absurd works
Saeid Akhavani, Mohsen Marasy,
Volume 17, Issue 66 (8-2024)
Volume 17, Issue 66 (8-2024)
Abstract
Most Iranian paintings in the Islamic period were used to illustrate manuscripts, and most of the illustrated manuscripts are literary books. Poetry and literature have been in the history of Iranian thought as a system of knowledge and epistemology. Therefore, the issue that is raised is that in Iran, what was the relationship between the history of painting and the history of literature and what effect did the change of literary discourses have on the history of painting? To clarify aspects of this issue, in this article, a section of a period has been discussed in which the literary discourse has changed in the history of literature. In this regard, the illustrations of Jami's Haft Awrang, illustrated in the court of Sultan Ibrahim Mirza, have been analyzed. In this research, Tartu-Moscow School of Cultural Semiotics and concepts of Inter-Semiotic Translation have been used. The results of this article showed that with the change of literary discourse, from the time of Jami to Ibrahim Mirza, Iranian painting has changed in terms of form and content. Haft Awrang, unlike Jami, is not a tool for conveying the concepts of Sufism for Sultan Ibrahim Mirza, but rather a literary and artistic text, and the literary and aesthetic aspects of the work were his priority. These literary and aesthetic aspects are also formed based on the attitudes and concepts of the Voqu School.
1. Introduction
Iranian painting has had a strong relationship with Persian literature due to its use in book illustration. The relationship between Iranian painting and Persian literature is important from two aspects: First, Iranian painting has a direct relationship with literary texts and has tried to translate literature into visual language. Secondly, due to the high costs and the presence of a large number of artists in the preparation of exquisitely illustrated manuscripts, only the court and the centers of power could carry out these projects. Based on this, painters, like poets and writers, were in the service of the royal court and libraries, and this closeness between artists and poets has led to a close relationship between painting and literature. So far, the relationship between Iranian painting and Persian literature has been investigated mostly at the text level. The case studies that have been done on an illustrated version have investigated the relationship between the literary text and the images added to that specific version. The subject of this article is reading the history of Iranian painting about the history of literature, and perhaps in this new perspective, we can search for new horizons in the history of Iranian painting and answer unknown questions. A comprehensive and accurate understanding of the relationship between the history of painting and the history of literature requires a diachronic and comparative study of the equivalence of the history of literature and the history of painting, which is not possible in the form of an article. In this article, to clarify aspects of the claim raised, in a synchronic study, the illustrated manuscript of Jami's Haft Awrang, which was prepared in the court of Sultan Ibrahim Mirza during the Safavid era, will be discussed. In this article, the images of this manuscript have been selected as a case study and analyzed to show the relationship between the history of Iranian painting and the history of Persian literature based on literary developments. Also, the influence of literary discourses on the form and content of Iranian painting has been studied.
2. Data and Method
In this article, to formulate the relationship between Persian literature and Iranian painting, literature as a discourse is considered. Discourse is defined here according to the theory of Michel Foucault, who introduced this concept about the concept of "power/knowledge". Iranian painting is also defined in this article based on the concept of "Inter-Semiotic Translation". Since Inter-Semiotic Translation refers to the translation from one Sign System to another, such as the translation from written signs to images, Iranian painting in the field of text illustration can be studied in the field of Inter-Semiotic Translation. In this article, the selected images are studied based on their relationship with the written text and their translation from the written sign system to the image.
To formulate and explain the relationship and difference between the two discourse spaces or the sign spaces in which the written text and the visual text are created, the theory of "Semiosphere" proposed in the cultural semiotics of the Tartu School has been used. According to this pattern, the discourse space in which the written text of Haft Awrang was produced represents a Semiosphere, and the discourse space in which the pictures are added represents another semiosphere. Jami's text has crossed the border between these two Semiospheres and based on the mechanisms of translation, it has been translated and internalized into the sign system of the new space (the discursive space that governs Ibrahim Mirza's library). With this theoretical approach, painting is not only an objective translation of the written text, but several factors are involved in this translation mechanism, which will lead to the formation of new layers of meaning in the text.
3. Results and Discussion
Abd-Al Rahman Jami, the author of the Haft Awrang Masnavi, had a Sufi attitude, so the poetic form and the narrations he narrated in his work all arose from his beliefs and the origin of Sufism. But Sultan Ibrahim Mirza and the artists of his library had a different attitude towards Jami poems. By adding illustrations to this manuscript, they have expressed their different approach to converting the written sign system of the Jami text into a visual sign system and have used mechanisms in this translation. For Sultan Ibrahim Mirza, Haft Awrang was not a tool to convey the concepts of Sufism, but a literary and artistic text, and the literary and aesthetic aspects of the work were his priority. The reason for this difference in attitude can be seen in the change of literary discourse at the beginning of the Safavid period.
In the first quarter of the 10th century of the Hijri (16th century CE), a new school of Persian poetry emerged, which took the lyric poem out of the dry and soulless format of the previous century. This new school was called "Voqu" and its purpose was to express love situations from reality and what happens between the lover and the beloved. Sultan Ibrahim Mirza was a poet and most of his poems are dedicated to expressing real situations and relationships between lovers. The editors of Ibrahim Mirza's poems in the introduction of the book of his poems that they have published have pointed out his tendency towards the school of Voqu, especially in his lyric poetry. Jami's period was the era of dominance of "imitative discourse" in poetry. However, in the case of Ibrahim Mirza, the literary discourse underwent a transformation and the "Voqu School" became the dominant literary discourse. Therefore, in the new conditions, the attitude of the elite towards literature and attention to the previous poets has also changed.
"Angels Bring Light to Saadi" is one of the paintings in this manuscript that specifically refers to a poet and is the first painting from the Masnavi of Sobha al-Abrar of Haft Awrang. In this story, a "Sufi" has a negative attitude towards a "poet" and it becomes clear to him that a verse from Saadi's poem has brought him a high position that a Sufi may not achieve this position. The same issue shows that literature is higher than Sufism and the position of poets is higher than Sufi. Understanding why, among a text with these characteristics, Ibrahim Mirza and his court artists chose the story related to Saadi for illustration as the first image of this part and translated it into a visual text with the mentioned mechanisms, only through establishing the relationship between the history of Persian literature and the history of Iranian painting is possible.
In another picture, which is about the story of Lily and Majnoon, the place of the text and the margin have been changed, and marginal elements have come to the center, and Majnoon has been marginalized as the main focus of this narrative. The use of this mechanism has led to the creation of the meaning that the whole narrative of Majnoon is represented in the painting as a literary narrative. So, the specific narrative of Jami, in which the Sufi purposes have priority, is marginalized as a macro-narrative. Beloved in Persian Sufi poetry is an expression of the perfect human being or absolute truth. She is a holy goddess and her will is above the lover's will. Such a lover was the high point of the lyrical imaginations of mystics from the Sana'i period to the Jami era for about four centuries. This complete and absolute goddess disappeared from Shah Ismail in the Safavid era. The most common type of Persian poetry during the formation of the Safavid state was the simple romantic lyric. Lyric poems mainly have no theme other than love that is virtual love or real love of the poet for his fellow man.
As another example, "Salaman and Absal" in Haft Awrang narrates a romantic story that contains mystical and moral references along with anecdotes and parables. If Sultan Ibrahim Mirza had an attitude similar to Jami's towards this narrative, he could have chosen characters or scenes for illustration that have mystical connotations. But all these elements have been removed and only the scene of two lovers connecting in a heavenly land is depicted, far from any signs that have a mystical meaning. Therefore, in this painting, by removing mystical symbols, the possibility of understanding the meaning of Jami has been distorted. With this mechanism, based on the concept of "love" which is derived from Voqu School, the story of Salaman and Absal has been translated into a Semiosphere of the Safavid period.
4. Conclusion
The results of this article show that with the change of literary discourse in the Safavid period, painting also changed in terms of form and content. Since Ibrahim Mirza and his court poets were inclined towards the Voqu School, the characteristics and principles of this literary movement have influenced the way of illustrating Haft Awrang. Although Jami had a completely Sufi attitude in Haft Awrang, based on the literary discourse of the 9th century Hijri, the poetic form and the narratives he narrated in his works were tools for expressing his ideas. But Sultan Ibrahim Mirza and his artists had a different attitude from Jami and by adding pictures to this manuscript, they expressed their different approach in transforming the written sign system of Jami text into a visual sign system. For Sultan Ibrahim Mirza, Haft Awrang was not a tool for conveying Sufi concepts, but a literary and artistic text, and the literary and aesthetic aspects of the work were his priority. These literary and aesthetic aspects are also formed based on the attitudes and concepts of the Voqu School, the most important of which is the concept of love. This difference in the attitude towards the concept of love in the era of Jami and Sultan Ibrahim Mirza can be seen in the difference in the representation of love in Haft Awrang text and illustrated manuscript. As a result of paying attention to the real world in the literary discourse, Ibrahim Mirza established similarities between his life and the narrative inside the paintings and used Haft Awrang as a medium to reflect his personal life. By analyzing based on the Semiosphere pattern, it can be concluded that during the time of Sultan Ibrahim Mirza, Haft Awrang was translated into a visual sign system based on the literary discourse of the Voqu School using different mechanisms. The change in literary discourse and its effect on the illustration of manuscripts show that Persian literature had a discourse role in Iranian painting. For a precise understanding of Iranian painting, the history of Iranian painting can be considered a function of the history of Persian literature and studied about the history of literature.
1. Introduction
Iranian painting has had a strong relationship with Persian literature due to its use in book illustration. The relationship between Iranian painting and Persian literature is important from two aspects: First, Iranian painting has a direct relationship with literary texts and has tried to translate literature into visual language. Secondly, due to the high costs and the presence of a large number of artists in the preparation of exquisitely illustrated manuscripts, only the court and the centers of power could carry out these projects. Based on this, painters, like poets and writers, were in the service of the royal court and libraries, and this closeness between artists and poets has led to a close relationship between painting and literature. So far, the relationship between Iranian painting and Persian literature has been investigated mostly at the text level. The case studies that have been done on an illustrated version have investigated the relationship between the literary text and the images added to that specific version. The subject of this article is reading the history of Iranian painting about the history of literature, and perhaps in this new perspective, we can search for new horizons in the history of Iranian painting and answer unknown questions. A comprehensive and accurate understanding of the relationship between the history of painting and the history of literature requires a diachronic and comparative study of the equivalence of the history of literature and the history of painting, which is not possible in the form of an article. In this article, to clarify aspects of the claim raised, in a synchronic study, the illustrated manuscript of Jami's Haft Awrang, which was prepared in the court of Sultan Ibrahim Mirza during the Safavid era, will be discussed. In this article, the images of this manuscript have been selected as a case study and analyzed to show the relationship between the history of Iranian painting and the history of Persian literature based on literary developments. Also, the influence of literary discourses on the form and content of Iranian painting has been studied.
2. Data and Method
In this article, to formulate the relationship between Persian literature and Iranian painting, literature as a discourse is considered. Discourse is defined here according to the theory of Michel Foucault, who introduced this concept about the concept of "power/knowledge". Iranian painting is also defined in this article based on the concept of "Inter-Semiotic Translation". Since Inter-Semiotic Translation refers to the translation from one Sign System to another, such as the translation from written signs to images, Iranian painting in the field of text illustration can be studied in the field of Inter-Semiotic Translation. In this article, the selected images are studied based on their relationship with the written text and their translation from the written sign system to the image.
To formulate and explain the relationship and difference between the two discourse spaces or the sign spaces in which the written text and the visual text are created, the theory of "Semiosphere" proposed in the cultural semiotics of the Tartu School has been used. According to this pattern, the discourse space in which the written text of Haft Awrang was produced represents a Semiosphere, and the discourse space in which the pictures are added represents another semiosphere. Jami's text has crossed the border between these two Semiospheres and based on the mechanisms of translation, it has been translated and internalized into the sign system of the new space (the discursive space that governs Ibrahim Mirza's library). With this theoretical approach, painting is not only an objective translation of the written text, but several factors are involved in this translation mechanism, which will lead to the formation of new layers of meaning in the text.
3. Results and Discussion
Abd-Al Rahman Jami, the author of the Haft Awrang Masnavi, had a Sufi attitude, so the poetic form and the narrations he narrated in his work all arose from his beliefs and the origin of Sufism. But Sultan Ibrahim Mirza and the artists of his library had a different attitude towards Jami poems. By adding illustrations to this manuscript, they have expressed their different approach to converting the written sign system of the Jami text into a visual sign system and have used mechanisms in this translation. For Sultan Ibrahim Mirza, Haft Awrang was not a tool to convey the concepts of Sufism, but a literary and artistic text, and the literary and aesthetic aspects of the work were his priority. The reason for this difference in attitude can be seen in the change of literary discourse at the beginning of the Safavid period.
In the first quarter of the 10th century of the Hijri (16th century CE), a new school of Persian poetry emerged, which took the lyric poem out of the dry and soulless format of the previous century. This new school was called "Voqu" and its purpose was to express love situations from reality and what happens between the lover and the beloved. Sultan Ibrahim Mirza was a poet and most of his poems are dedicated to expressing real situations and relationships between lovers. The editors of Ibrahim Mirza's poems in the introduction of the book of his poems that they have published have pointed out his tendency towards the school of Voqu, especially in his lyric poetry. Jami's period was the era of dominance of "imitative discourse" in poetry. However, in the case of Ibrahim Mirza, the literary discourse underwent a transformation and the "Voqu School" became the dominant literary discourse. Therefore, in the new conditions, the attitude of the elite towards literature and attention to the previous poets has also changed.
"Angels Bring Light to Saadi" is one of the paintings in this manuscript that specifically refers to a poet and is the first painting from the Masnavi of Sobha al-Abrar of Haft Awrang. In this story, a "Sufi" has a negative attitude towards a "poet" and it becomes clear to him that a verse from Saadi's poem has brought him a high position that a Sufi may not achieve this position. The same issue shows that literature is higher than Sufism and the position of poets is higher than Sufi. Understanding why, among a text with these characteristics, Ibrahim Mirza and his court artists chose the story related to Saadi for illustration as the first image of this part and translated it into a visual text with the mentioned mechanisms, only through establishing the relationship between the history of Persian literature and the history of Iranian painting is possible.
In another picture, which is about the story of Lily and Majnoon, the place of the text and the margin have been changed, and marginal elements have come to the center, and Majnoon has been marginalized as the main focus of this narrative. The use of this mechanism has led to the creation of the meaning that the whole narrative of Majnoon is represented in the painting as a literary narrative. So, the specific narrative of Jami, in which the Sufi purposes have priority, is marginalized as a macro-narrative. Beloved in Persian Sufi poetry is an expression of the perfect human being or absolute truth. She is a holy goddess and her will is above the lover's will. Such a lover was the high point of the lyrical imaginations of mystics from the Sana'i period to the Jami era for about four centuries. This complete and absolute goddess disappeared from Shah Ismail in the Safavid era. The most common type of Persian poetry during the formation of the Safavid state was the simple romantic lyric. Lyric poems mainly have no theme other than love that is virtual love or real love of the poet for his fellow man.
As another example, "Salaman and Absal" in Haft Awrang narrates a romantic story that contains mystical and moral references along with anecdotes and parables. If Sultan Ibrahim Mirza had an attitude similar to Jami's towards this narrative, he could have chosen characters or scenes for illustration that have mystical connotations. But all these elements have been removed and only the scene of two lovers connecting in a heavenly land is depicted, far from any signs that have a mystical meaning. Therefore, in this painting, by removing mystical symbols, the possibility of understanding the meaning of Jami has been distorted. With this mechanism, based on the concept of "love" which is derived from Voqu School, the story of Salaman and Absal has been translated into a Semiosphere of the Safavid period.
4. Conclusion
The results of this article show that with the change of literary discourse in the Safavid period, painting also changed in terms of form and content. Since Ibrahim Mirza and his court poets were inclined towards the Voqu School, the characteristics and principles of this literary movement have influenced the way of illustrating Haft Awrang. Although Jami had a completely Sufi attitude in Haft Awrang, based on the literary discourse of the 9th century Hijri, the poetic form and the narratives he narrated in his works were tools for expressing his ideas. But Sultan Ibrahim Mirza and his artists had a different attitude from Jami and by adding pictures to this manuscript, they expressed their different approach in transforming the written sign system of Jami text into a visual sign system. For Sultan Ibrahim Mirza, Haft Awrang was not a tool for conveying Sufi concepts, but a literary and artistic text, and the literary and aesthetic aspects of the work were his priority. These literary and aesthetic aspects are also formed based on the attitudes and concepts of the Voqu School, the most important of which is the concept of love. This difference in the attitude towards the concept of love in the era of Jami and Sultan Ibrahim Mirza can be seen in the difference in the representation of love in Haft Awrang text and illustrated manuscript. As a result of paying attention to the real world in the literary discourse, Ibrahim Mirza established similarities between his life and the narrative inside the paintings and used Haft Awrang as a medium to reflect his personal life. By analyzing based on the Semiosphere pattern, it can be concluded that during the time of Sultan Ibrahim Mirza, Haft Awrang was translated into a visual sign system based on the literary discourse of the Voqu School using different mechanisms. The change in literary discourse and its effect on the illustration of manuscripts show that Persian literature had a discourse role in Iranian painting. For a precise understanding of Iranian painting, the history of Iranian painting can be considered a function of the history of Persian literature and studied about the history of literature.
Volume 20, Issue 4 (3-2014)
Abstract
Tendency to najwa (religious whispering) and praying to God has been present in human soul from the time immemorial. In other words, the background of human’s God-seeking tendencies has been confirmed through historical and archeological excavations. Attachment to the infinite source of being and coming to the divine threshold is a process that can be possible through prayers and that's the reason, worship enjoys special place in Islamic educational setup which has been encouraged by various ways. Considering the needs of the present generation on the one side and necessity of proper and sufficient attention on invaluable heritage from the household of the prophet, on the other side, the current study is dedicated to the literary discourse analysis of the first prayer in al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya. The discourse analysis is a new method, which more than others, emphasizes on the relationship between text and its situational texture. Likewise, the discourse analysis intends to highlight relationship between features of literary text and its topic and texture. The results of this research, which is done using a descriptive-analytical method, indicate a harmony between linguistic context) literary features( of the first prayer and its situational context.
| Page 1 from 1 |