https://lire.modares.ac.ir/ Literary Research en daily 1 Sat, 22 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0330 Sat, 22 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0330 https://lire.modares.ac.ir/article_28394.html This study aims to examine the cognitive mechanisms involved in the production and comprehension of idiomatic expressions in Attar's anecdotes and to explain how the unconventional interpretation of these idioms serves mystical meaning-making. Using an analytical-applied approach and Langacker's cognitive grammar framework, particularly the concept of "current discourse space" and principles of "semantic decomposability and compositionality", idioms in selected works of Attar were qualitatively analyzed. The findings indicate that the process of creative meaning-making of idioms in Attar's mystical language can be described in a four-layer conceptual model: input layer, cognitive mechanisms layer, processing layer, and output and feedback layer. Unlike the traditional rhetorical approach, Attar simultaneously utilizes both literal and figurative aspects of idioms and purposefully deviates from the speaker's intended context to engage in creative meaning-making. This innovative interpretation is based on various cognitive mechanisms such as conceptual metaphor and metonymy, profile shifting, and conceptual blending. The functions of this approach can be examined at three levels: critiquing prevalent discourses, expressing complex mystical concepts in simple language, and creating wonder in the audience. This research demonstrates that a cognitive approach can contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationship between language, thought, and mystical experience in classical Persian texts and open new horizons in linguistic studies of mystical texts. https://lire.modares.ac.ir/article_28713.html This study examines Mohammad Baharlou’s novel »Love-Killing« through Brian McHale’s postmodern ontological lens, focusing on its interplay of reality and illusion, nested narratives, and boundary-breaking techniques. The research demonstrates how the novel transcends modernist epistemology to embrace postmodern ontological ambiguity. Key findings reveal that »Love-Killing« constructs "possible worlds" and destabilizes narrative hierarchies, aligning with McHale’s theory of ontological dominance. The novel’s metafictional strategies—such as intertextuality with »The Blind Owl« and metalepsis—blur the lines between reality and fiction, positioning it as a quintessential postmodern text. This analysis bridges a gap in Persian literary criticism by applying McHale’s framework to a non-Western context, highlighting its cross-cultural relevance. https://lire.modares.ac.ir/article_28392.html .One Persian poetic theme, having close historical connection with praising poetry, is supplicating and meeting needs that poets have formed it as a literary figure and have deeply thought on expressing it. Rhetorical analyzers, historically elaborating it and setting tips for its usage, have tried to help poets on this figure; this explains other titles, besides beauty of demand, such as request politeness, demand acquittance among rhetorical scholars. On one side, rhetorical scholars beside beauty of demand, have replaced it with another figure called beauty of apology and on other side, have separated them by defining features for them. This paper, beside studying and analyzing the definitions of beauty of demand and beauty of apology in rhetorical works based on the samples used in poetic works, shows that beauty of apology is not a separated literary figure from beauty of demand and dividing them for their demand and request is not academically correct. https://lire.modares.ac.ir/article_28667.html Musical terminology plays a significant role in creating Hafez's interwoven networks of double entendres (ihams). Some of these terms are clear and commonly used, making their technical meaning and the resulting double entendres relatively easy to identify. However, others are obscure and less common, and the double entendres formed from them are difficult and elusive even for experts, which is why discovering and explaining them has more literary value and delight. In this article, after a brief discussion about the relationship between Hafez and music, the types of double entendres, and the relationship between double entendres and the audience's knowledge, we have attempted to discover and explain those hidden double entendres in Hafez's Divan that are based on obscure and less common musical terms; terms such as "baqa" (survival), "halqa" (ring), "khaneh" (division), "khazan" (autumn), "dowr" (cycle), "dayr-e raheb" (monk's monastery), "rav" (manner), "ravan" (flowing), "sarv" (cypress), "shakh" (branch), "tarz" (style), "gham-zadeh" (grief-stricken), "karsaz" (arranger), and "gereft" (gripped). Our criterion for identifying these terms has been specialized music dictionaries and, in some cases, dictionaries based on old texts. https://lire.modares.ac.ir/article_28393.html Imagology is a branch of comparative literature that examines the image of the "I" and the "other" in a literary work. The development of relationships, travel and communication caused the Iranian "me" to be more exposed to the culture, customs and opinions of the European "other" and to correct old mental assumptions or to start creating new mental stereotypes. Today we are left with many travelogues from the Qajar era that can be cited as valid evidence to examine the image of “the other”. Ezz al-Doulah's Travelogue in Europe is one of the first anecdotes from the point of view of an Iranian prince. The purpose of this research is to examine the images described in Ezz al-Doulah's Travelogue in Europe and to clarify how the image of "the other" is reflected in the work and at the same time, show how the Iranian "me" presents itself during the observations. To this end, we will use the descriptive-analytical method in data analysis, and we will specifically use Ditze's view of imagology. This research shows that the representation of images from the traveler's point of view emphasizes "the superiority of the identity of the other" from different dimensions and to "ignore one's own identity". https://lire.modares.ac.ir/article_28385.html Evolved briefly, the word “MEYZAR” [meʔzar/meyzar] is used in many traditional Persian texts. For instance, Sa’adi uses this word uses this word twice in his book Bustân, which is defined as loincloth, trousers and similar meanings. However, the meanings provided by Bustân explications for the word “MEYZAR” are not correct for etymological, textual, sociological, and contextual reasons. Research on textual and metatextual evidence shows that such meanings must have been indicated in the margins of the verses. These equivalents borrowed from Arabic dictionaries create ambiguity. According to the evidence presented in this paper, this word means ‘turban,’ and we believe that the rest of the equivalents are just secondary. Studying the explications of Sa’adi poems by valuable commentators is an indication of their lexical mastery over Arabic language and Arabic clothing culture rather than literary knowledge. Presenting evidence from different dimensions clarifies the meanings of the word so that ultimately both stanzas of Bustân are disambiguated. https://lire.modares.ac.ir/article_28384.html Over the past few decades, creative writing has been consolidated as an academic discipline within higher education systems worldwide. It has played a pivotal role in cultivating professional writers, enriching contemporary literature, and strengthening the relationship between universities and society. This article examines the structure, objectives, and pedagogical approaches of creative writing programs at leading universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. From the standpoint of curriculum design and pedagogical methodology, these programs typically integrate a diverse combination of specialized workshops, literature and literary skills courses, creative theses, elective and interdisciplinary modules, and professional training. The second section of the article addresses the necessity and feasibility of establishing creative writing as a formal academic program in Iran. Through an analysis of the approved master’s curriculum in creative writing, the study demonstrates that, despite Iran’s considerable cultural, literary, and academic potential, the institutionalization of this discipline encounters significant challenges. These include limited pedagogical experience, scarcity of native text books, and institutional resistance to curricular innovation. The article concludes by proposing strategies for the effective implementation of creative writing programs in Iranian universities. https://lire.modares.ac.ir/article_28390.html In this article, the postmodern ontological approach based on McHale's theory in the novel of lovemaking is examined in a descriptive-analytical manner. Brian McHale sees postmodernism as a continuation of modernism. According to him, the dominant thing in modern fiction is epistemology and in postmodern fiction is ontology. This research shows that the romance novel reveals more about the possible worlds in the story and, according to McHale's theory, has a more prominent ontological dimension. In the study of this novel, the interaction between your worlds in "reality" and "fantasy" is shown and using McHill's theory, while exploring the unrecognizability of imagination from reality, the influence and obedience of reality to fantasy On display. By creating inner stories and overlapping narrative levels when Baharloo pits different worlds against each other or when he breaks the boundaries between them with fictional tricks, in fact, the considerations of        existence. It evokes cognition.  https://lire.modares.ac.ir/article_28391.html Saadi's reflections on governance and his portrayal of desirable and undesirable political power have significantly influenced Iranian cultural thought. This study focuses on the political divide of Saadi's era by examining four of his odes: two addressed to an idealized ruler and two to a foreign leader. The study applies Van Leeuwen’s legitimation processes to analyze Saadi’s statements on the foundations of authority and the qualities of desirable political leadership, contrasting them with his critiques of flawed policies. Van Leeuwen categorizes legitimation into authorization, moral evaluation, rationalization, and mythopoesis. To provide a deeper textual analysis and to reveal Saadi's efforts to affirm his ideal vision of governance, Van Dijk’s ideological square is also employed. According to Van Dijk, discourse tends to emphasize the positive attributes of the in-group and the negative traits of the out-group while downplaying the opposite. A close examination of the data tables for each ode and their text reveals that Saadi mainly uses moral evaluation and rationalization to persuade his audience, although the legitimized ideas, poem structure, and tone vary across the odes. When addressing a native ruler, Saadi emphasizes a power based on divine grace, wisdom, justice, and noble lineage, reinforcing its legitimacy. In contrast, with a foreign ruler, he highlights the reliance on brute force, lacking other sources of legitimacy. While Saadi regards the king's authority as a divine blessing and does not seek regime change, he consistently advises rulers who lack justice-based policies. https://lire.modares.ac.ir/article_28395.html The influence of Arabic language and literature in Persian literature is so wide that it has gone beyond the level of vocabulary and some morphological and syntactical points and has appeared in the form of poems in Persian texts. In many cases, this expression is in the form of Citation addend, in which the Arabic poem has a grammatical role for the Persian text. The analysis of Persian texts shows that the Citation to the poetry of some Arab poets has a very high frequency, and this point is never accidental. In this article, we have analyzed the historical works of the 6th to 8th centuries of Hijri from the sociological point of view of Citation to Arabic poems in Persian texts, changes in the dignity of the poems, repeated poetic themes and the difference between the recording of the Arabic text and the Persian text. This review shows that Iranian writers have mainly referred to the poetry of poets who are either Iranian or have a deep connection with Iranians. On the other hand, sometimes-Iranian writers have separated Arabic poetry from the dignity of its original descent and used it in another structure. In addition, a certain number of Arabic poems and themes are repeated in Persian texts. Finally, we must say that it is very likely that Iranian writers, instead of referring to the Diwan of Arab poets or Arabic reference texts, used Persian earlier texts and transcribed the works of their predecessors when referencing a poem.  https://lire.modares.ac.ir/article_28396.html Semiotics is considered an interdisciplinary approach that studies the semiotic systems of a work. One of the fundamental branches in the field of semiotics of poetry is Michael Refatter's theory. Applying Refatter's semiotic model in the study and rereading of literary works, especially poetry, sheds light on important points about the creation of the work and its re-creation by the reader. According to this theory, the reader is considered a very important factor in the process of reading the text. In this model, poems are first examined in two ways: receptive reading and latent reading, which in the first stage analyzes meaning and in the next stage linguistic implications. Then, the reader or critic analyzes and perceives lexical associations or key themes, and finally ends up discovering the semantic network of the work. In this research, using the Refater theory in qualitative analysis and with the approach of retrospective reading, the descriptive accumulations and systems of poems have been identified, and the dispersed matrix in the entire poem has been obtained, and finally the semantic structure has been clarified. The aim of the article is to show to what extent Refater's structuralist model in the analysis of the poem "Moonflower" leads to a creative reading of the poem and how the narrative plurality in Nima's poem has caused a fluid space of discourse. https://lire.modares.ac.ir/article_28560.html This study examines irony as a narrative mechanism in Tuti-Nameh and analyzes its pivotal role in creating ambiguous and polysemous meanings. Employing a descriptive-analytical method, the present research seeks to answer the following questions: Which types of irony are predominant in this work, and how are the parrot's sub-narratives positioned ironically in relation to the main story? The findings indicate that situational irony is the most recurrent type in the book. This irony emerges from the meaningful contrast between the main story—which itself is framed within dramatic irony—and the parrot's embedded tales. While the sub-narratives ostensibly serve to advise and admonish Khojasteh, they inherently function as deception, mockery, or warning. The parrot employs two key techniques—ironic character equivalences and ironic endings—to place the sub-stories in an ironic position relative to the main narrative. Furthermore, other types of irony, such as verbal, moral, radical, fate, and Socratic irony, are present in the text with lesser frequency. The parrot character, with its dual role of well-wisher and deceiver, is the primary agent of semantic multiplicity, elevating Tuti-Nameh beyond a merely didactic and moralistic work. Given the fundamental importance of irony in the structure of this text, the present study offers a novel reading of its narrative capacities and hidden layers of meaning. https://lire.modares.ac.ir/article_28561.html Applied semantics deals with the study of meaning in the course of communication. The study of language analysis, discourse analysis and hermeneutics and language usage are parts of applied semantics. Pragmatics is the study of the meaning and relationship between linguistic forms and their users. Therefore, pragmatics is more concerned with the analysis of what people mean by their utterances than with the meaning of the words or phrases they use. One of the philosophers who has studied the audience's understanding of words and the rules of verbal communication is Grice. In this theory, the main questions are, firstly, how do we understand that the speaker's intention is not the main meaning of the sentence, but one of the secondary or implied meanings, and secondly, how do we infer this secondary meaning? According to Grice, the implied meaning draws attention when one or more of the following four principles are not observed: 1. The principle of honesty (quality) 2. The principle of sufficiency (quantity) 3. The principle of connection 4. The principle of observing custom and method.These principles can be seen in all literary texts; Based on this, this research, using a qualitative method, has investigated the principles of Grice's cooperation and its violation in the novel Asb choobi by Elham Fallah and the novel Dead on the Road by Natsha Amiri https://lire.modares.ac.ir/article_28562.html The novel "Scorched Land" is an effective reproduction of the discourse of war, which represents a special episteme, i.e., the opposition of the geopolitical discourse (territorial development) in Iraq's foreign policy against the value-oriented Islamism discourse in Iran's foreign policy, and produces its own truth-knowledge. By analyzing the environmental discourse of war in a descriptive-analytical way, we will answer question that conflict between two discourses of geopolitics and value-oriented Islamism has caused what disturbances in natural environment and what effects this natural environment has on the physical and mental aspects of human life? The results of  research show that with the emergence of political economy, which is evident in war between Iraq and Iran over oil, concept of nature has changed and Iraqi government has ignored laws of nature and by applying the power resulting from geopolitical discourse (land development), created new events and forms of behavior that, in addition to environmental pollution, have created new forms of behavior not only in human actions, but also in actions that author attributes to nature which shows that power comes from everywhere and that power is everywhere and multiple forms of power relations in Foucault's thought. In general, images presented in novel "Scorched Land" of Ahmad Mahmoud's novel show that not only humans but also nature has been a vehicle for exercising power. Therefore, in completing Foucault's theory, can be said that when science and power fall into the institutional circle, not only humans but also environment become objects... https://lire.modares.ac.ir/article_28563.html Muhammad and Ahmad Ghazali, two prominent Iranian thinkers of the sixth century, have thought-provoking views on the nature and characteristics of language. The present essay, written in a descriptive-analytical manner and with a phenomenological approach, examines and compares the views of these two brothers in the field of the nature and characteristics of language and tries to answer these two questions:Give that: 1- What are the similarities and differences between the opinions of the two brothers in the discussion of language opinions, especially "the nature of language"? 2- What approach does each of the Ghazalians use to explain the concept of language? The results of this study show that the examination of the concept of "what is language" is tied to the category of "heart" both in the eyes of Muhammad and in the eyes of Ahmad Ghazali; In other words, "heart" is the common point of two points of view. In the process of examining "language in the general sense", the opinion of both thinkers converges in reaching the area of ​​"silence". But in the discussion of "language in a special sense", Mohammad Ghazali has a linguistic approach in the design and description of linguistic concepts and terms; That is, like a linguist, he examines language as an object. While Ahmad Ghazali's encounter with language is an existential encounter, and it is as if language is truly the house of existence for him.  https://lire.modares.ac.ir/article_28693.html The Vagueness School, or "Dabestan-e Voqu'", represents a significant movement in 10th-century Persian poetry. Departing from intricate poetic devices and elaborate fantasies, poets within this school favored simple language and meticulous attention to detail to convey personal experiences and real-life events. This approach, which prioritizes realism and eschews excessive imagination and literary complexities, bears a striking resemblance to the 19th-century European literary realism movement. Both schools share a fundamental objective: to establish a direct, accessible connection with the audience through straightforward, universally comprehensible language, thereby fostering a shared understanding of the author's intentions.Mohtasham Kashani, a prominent 10th-century Vagueness poet, is widely celebrated for his renowned twelve-stanza elegy commemorating Imam Hussein (AS). However, his poetic repertoire extends beyond religious and panegyric works, encompassing a collection of romantic poems. Notably, his treatises "Jalaliyyah" and "Naql-e Oshshaq" feature poems that chronicle his passionate affections for two distinct beloveds. This research embarks on an investigation into the manifestations of literary realism within Kashani's romantic poetry, as presented in these treatises. Employing a descriptive-analytical methodology, the study draws upon documentary and library-based data collection. The research process involved a thorough examination of relevant printed sources, followed by the categorization and analysis of pertinent materials. The study's findings reveal that Kashani's romantic poems exhibit key characteristics of literary realism, including: detailed descriptions, the revelation and articulation of reality, the avoidance of ambiguity as a vehicle for imagination, a rejection of fantastical elements, and an objective, observational perspective on events.