Recognitive interpretation the Tale of Faqih and the Extremely Ugly Daughter’s from the second chapter in the Golestan of Sa’di

Abstract

The Sa’di researchers have often assumed the tales of the Golestan to be “real or semi-real incidents” and, then, interpreted the tales in line with this assumption. For instance, they have considered the internal genre of the tale of “Faqih’s Extremely Ugly Daughter’s Marriage to the Blind Man” to be based on a true daily story about the “importance of woman’s beauty in marriage”. The consequence of this certain type of reading is lack of convergence in the existing interpretations and accusing Sa’di of contradictory and even futile words. The writers of this research paper, however, believe the tale to be a “symbolic-metaphorical allegory” and its subject to be “a criticism of political behaviors of those faqihs (jurisprudents) serving the men of power”. The body of this tale is composed of tangible and experimental structured concepts with a long metaphorical history in the Persian literature which are used to form a secondary concept. The correspondence between the parallel lines of “semantic field of each word” and its “metaphorical field” reveal the network of partial implications and finally the writer’s intent. Therefore, “the faqih’s extremely ugly daughter” is a metaphor for the “daughter of imposition” or “the faqih’s extremely meaningless words”, “reluctance to marriage” is a metaphor for people’s reluctance to read the faqih’s works, and “the blind son-in-law” is a metaphor for a reader who has no common sense.

Keywords

• faqih
• ugly girl
• nature
• bride
• blind son-in-law