فصلنامه نقد ادبی (Jul 2023)
The Inspiration for Writing Makhzan-ol-Asrār and Eskandar-nāme by NIZāmi based on Action Discourse
Abstract
The signs that direct the discourse of a narrative to create a core action in the central core and to reproduce intelligent and program-oriented meanings constitute the pattern of Greimas’ action discourse in the context of the narrative. The preface of Persian classics reflects the author's feelings in creating the work. This essay has examined the narrator's reasons for creating the narrative by exploring the discourse in the process of creating the narrative and the reception of the verbal signs in the prefaces of the verses of Nizāmi Ganjavi ‘s Makhzan-ol-Asrār and Iskandernāme. This essay explained the manner of discourse action in the opening of these Masnavies using a descriptive-analytical approach to illustrate the composition of these poems based on Greimas’s discourse and relying on the study of the signs that refer to the conditions of the Nizāmi in the preface during the creation of the works. This study investigated the evolution of Nizmi's states using Greimas' action discourse theory and extracted and analyzed the pattern of action-value and action-prescriptive discourses in the central core of the preface of the ethical and didactic works of this narrative poet by extracting discourse signs. Extended Abstract Lithuanian narratologist A. J. Greimas has presented a coherent model of modern sign- semantics for the study of narrative, arguing that the recognition of literary texts is no longer based on structural analysis and recognition of sender and receiver, but that the process of meaning production in the text, from transmission to reception, is based on functional elements. The elements of meaning production in discourse are intelligent and program-oriented, ultimately leading to actions in narratives. Discursive studies emerged after structuralism and semiotics, and accordingly, the best literary field is the extraction of signs and reaching the sequence of meaning in the creation of narrative. The indirect discourse, the representation of the discourse of the other and the language of the other in the lyrical quotation marks have long been known in the discourse- novel form, as found in the earliest periods of theological culture. Many of the works of the Iranian classical literature have the ability to narrate and extract discursive theories. Hakim Nizāmi Ganjavi composed his own systems when stylistic and linguistic changes began in relation to the previous style of Persian poetry. During this period in northwestern Iran, in the Azerbaijan region, a group of poets emerged whose style was new. They were able to renew the Persian poetry style. Nizāmi's works are in the depths of content creation, forms, characters, and the purpose of a unique morality. The elaborate presentation of human personhood, human emotions, happiness and sorrow, natural desires and aspirations have been discussed and analyzed in these works to the extent that it is intertwined with the social ideals of the poet and the exploration of the psychology of the spiritual world of mankind, concerns his experiences, turmoil and goals are in Nizāmi's poetry a philosophical and moral concept. Action discourse is a narrative-based method in which action is motivated by an inductive, prescriptive or value motive; the actor does not act according to his own emotions or will and feeling, a relationship of command is dominant in this system and the expression of meaning is subject to predetermined goals. According to Greimas, in this kind of cognitive systems, the process governing the text in most of the story starts with a shortcoming and leads to a contract. This research analyzes the state of the Nizāmi spirit by extracting the forms of action in introducing of his moral works during the creation of each of these Masnavis, to show that Nizāmi wrote the Makhzan-ol-Asrār and Iskandarnāme by which factor or factors of action he wrote. This essay does not examine narratives, but addresses the premise of these systems. Introduction of a narrative reveals the subject in a discourse form and knowledge of the state of the spoken processor at processing time so that the reader with a better understanding of the utterances explores the models of dynamic linguistic production processes in the creation of the main narrative discourses. Nizāmi, in his composition, narrates the sequence of events in the lives of the heroes, but the introduction of each Masnavi includes the present poet. At the beginning of each system, he explains the reason for the creation. Therefore, the essay is not concerned with the personalities of the narrative of the systems, but rather explains the signs by examining the poet's state when he created the work, leading to the action of each work. The writing of the Masnavis of the Makhzan-ol-Asrār and Iskandarnāme as the first and last Nizāmi’s masnavis has been done in twenty years and in different phases of the poet's soul. We begin with a young poet seeking to create a work to make his reputation known to the world of literature. Therefore, in composing an Ethical-philosophical Masnavi, he attempts to express human complexities and a functional-value discursive variant; and it depicts a prescriptive action in the introduction. Here, the poet is an activist working to achieve the object of value and willing to reward him for creating this action. So, the young man is looking for wealth and fame. Nizāmi writes his love masnavis after Makhzan-ol-Asrār. Composing each work creates a new perspective as well as insight into the poet's affairs. The poet, who has created human landscapes in his masnavis, considers himself in the need of composing a masnavi which, apart from attaching to the object of value, is for quantitative evaluations, in order to solve ontological crises with the aim of finding himself and reaching wisdom. The discourse of Sharaf-Nāmeh and Eghbal- Nāme from Iskandar-Nāme masnavi is an action-value discourse that motivates the poet to create an Ethical Masnavi in line with experiences Iskandar's rationalism shows that, though these experiences are legends attributed to Iskandar, they represent a wise recognition of the scholarly and ancient poet demonstrating the value of wisdom in the symbolic language of these masnavis.
