Categorization and Pathology of Persian Stylistic Researches

Abstract

Abstract In following article, surveys and researches about Persian style were categorized in two branches of historical and formalistic styles Mohammad Taghi Bahar founded stylistics as an autonomous knowledge by publishing his book, History of the evolution of Persian prose (1331), for teaching in University of Tehran. This book which has been influenced by verbal instructions of qajar dynasty’s scholars made the way generally has been followed by researchers in Persian stylistics up to now. However, researchers and critics have introduced various theories and approaches during last four decades. Stagnation in Persian stylistic researches is the main problem which is considered in current article. The main questions are: What branch of stylistics should be the performed Persian stylistic researches? “what are the weak points of surveys” and “what should be done for getting rid of this stagnation?” The main objective of current article is taking steps for removing stagnation from Persian stylistics. Malek osh-Shoara Bahar used periodization in studying prose styles and analyzed revolution of Persian prose in lexical aspect (obsolete words, Arabic words, synonyms, words repetition), morphological aspect (verbal prefixes, comparative adjective suffixes), syntactic aspect (precedence of verb over its belongings, omission of verbs) and rhetorical aspect (simile and allegory, metonymy and metaphor, prolixity and periphrasis, riming prose and harmony). In fact he tried to show both health and strength and laxity and corruption period of prose. We call Bahar stylistics and all researches done in his way historical stylistics with traditional attitude. In this method, styles' consistency and evolution through history have been studied and preiodization of styles has been taken into account. Mentioned researches periodized styles, finding formal similarities and differences. Since, neglecting meaning and text functionality they have only paid attention to form and couldn't study dual relation of historical situation and language function as well, the name of Historical stylistics in a traditional way vs. modern historical stylistics is chosen for them. Other surveys on Persian poems can be categorized in formalist stylistics branch Mohammad Reza Shafi'ee Kadkani introduced formalist stylistics to Persian researchers in practice by presenting formalists' definition of style and studying Bidel style in mentioned way. One can criticize formalist stylistics because it stops on text surface and does not pay attention to situational context. Historical subjectivity dominance, absence of theoretical support, loss of linguistics knowledge in stylistic surveys, lack of coherence between text and its situational context, disregarding stylistics features' role in deeper and better understanding of text and dispersion and fragmentation of researches are some weak points of Persian stylistics. To exit such situation, it is necessary to recall functionality of stylistics knowledge to researchers. Stylistics knowledge does not only pay attention to lingual description but in this knowledge analysis of formalistic features and lingual structure is a tool for understanding text meaning, identifying poets and authors' individuality and finally recognizing stylistic features of genres and periods. It is necessary to study styles' genres using different approaches as functional, critical, cognitive, historical and feminist. Our first priority is studying styles' genres because it results not only to recognizing stylistics features of genres but also to know individual styles and finally to provide needed information for studying styles of periods. Using the results of genre stylistics and paying attention to historical approach, one can recognize periods’ style in practice. Considering stylish intergeneric features, one can determine dominant genre of each period and finally can understand connection of stylish features with the dominant subjectivity asking different questions such as which historical and social features resulted in dominant subjectivity or what the role of power bases was. Despite complexities and difficulties of genre stylistics, we introduce following recommendations in prose and poem domain as start point: In Persian prose area followings can be subjects of articles and theses of students who are interested in stylistic researches: Myth, legend and tales (which include sub genres of epical and fairy tales), fable (animal fables, Sufism charismata fables), Romance stories, novels, short stories, flash fiction and travel diaries (subgenre of monograph), history (Courtier history writing subgenres, daily chronology), Sufism Shathiyat, Sufism doctrinal texts, letter (subgenres of Sufism, friendly and official letters), irony (subgenres of political, social and general ironies), Siyasatname, political memories, and biography. Choosing mentioned subjects, students can extend research of Persian prose stylistics and then enter them to Persian literature history. Studying genres' styles, it will be possible to determine individual styles, level of creativity and personalized features of writers' language . In the field of Persian poem, study of epic genres , zoorkhane poems , love poems , romantic ghazal, mystical ghazal , social ghazal , panegyric verse , hymns, elegies, comic verses, bacchonalian verses, prison verses and subgenres of any of them, in addition to leading to the precise recognition of subgenres of poems, identifies the individuality of poets and stylistic characteristics of each of these genres and periods . In total, this study can lead to the richness of the history of Persian literature .