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Sociological criticism is one of the modern and efficient methods of the study of literary texts, and today it has a wide application in the analysis of modern literary geners, especially the contemporary Persian novel.                                 This article aims at the analysis and appreciation of the contemporary Persian novel and explores the historical, political, and sociological structure of the Iranian society reflected in some of these novels. The findings of this research show that:

1.Novel is the most complete genre that might respond positively to   modern sociological studies

2.The Persian novel can explain the structures of the Iranian society very well.

3.The more distance we take from the simple structure of the Iranian society in the constitutional age (i.e. , early nineteenth century), the age of the emergence of the first Persian novels, and move towards the more complicated and intricate contemporary society ,the structure of the Persian  novel becomes more complicated and the social themes become more varied and more complex.

4.The themes and subjects treated by the writers of the Persian novels shift from broad generalizations to specific details. This point, on one hand, shows the individualization of the Iranian contemporary man, who has a proper in the modern novel ,and the change of the structures of the society from the ancient simple ,primitive and heroic state to complicated and modern structures  on the other.

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The following issues will be explored in this article:

Mohammad Taghi Bahar's attitude toward the important international developments including the first and second world war and the consequences of the 2 wars; the situations of Iran and some Asian and European governments in the 2 wars. Given the enormous effect of political pacts and agreements between Iran and other government on the cultural, social and political affairs of our country, the Bahar's reaction to these pacts and the political and military interference of foreign countries especially Russia, England and US are worth considering within a cultural and historical framework.

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This article revisits 'brag' and 'bragging' in the battle field in Ferdowsi's Shahname. To this end, in the first section, the denotative and idiomatic meanings of brag and bragging are examined and their historical background in ancient Greek, Arab and Iranian as well as the literature of the fourth and fifth centuries are briefly illustrated. The second section aims at exploring Ferdowsi's artistry in dealing with the techniques of bragging in the battle field by Shahname's champions and presents an evaluation of functions and the rhetorical values of bragging as utilized in ferdowsi's story-telling discourse.

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A subject of great concern in Persian poetry of the Constitution Age is the concept of 'Nation'. The correct understanding and interpretation of the message of this age, to a great extent , depends on an understanding of its position. There is a sharp difference between what the poets of this age stated and those of their predecessors.  In this article, the concept of 'Nation' is examined under the two parts of Pre-Islam and Post-Islam. The Pre-Islam Iranian were well familiar with such concepts as nation, and race. However, quickly after their acceptance of Islam, their attitudes towards the concept of 'Nation' changed drastically. In general, the major meanings of 'Nation' comprise Islam world, Restoration world, place of birth, and nation world.   The results of this study reveal that the conceptualization of 'Nation' in the Constitution Age Poetry must be different, even though some traditional senses of the concept prevail. 'Nation' in its new sense subsumes  elements like a shift in the role of the government and people, racial and national dependencies, and Iranian identity with all its features.

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Shahnameh  is the whole mirror of ancient beliefs and Iranian's identity in far past years to the end of Sassanid's times. Most of Iranian ancient beliefs are manifested in each three parts of this epical work especially in mythic and epic periods. Herbages are the phenomena that is the subject of contemplation in mythical and also Totemic and anima beliefs which are some of the first forms of religion. The reflection of these beliefs which are sometimes similar to the other folk's myth, can be found in Shahnameh. Worshiping of herbages and the plant ancestry of mankind, which have often been seen among different tribes, are the core beliefs manifested in Shahnameh. Also, some of the characters in Shahnameh are goddess of herbage that their birth and death are the same as that of their mythical sample. In fact, these characters are the transformed models of mythical goddess of herbages.             

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Language is a collection of conventional symbols. Although these symbols do not  have any natural connection with what they their purport, their constant usage has made rendered them natural symbols. So the authors of literary work, in order to attract their listeners, resort to this strategy and change the ordinary form of language. This change can be implemented in the structure of sentences or words; like manipulating sentence structures; deleting part of the phrase or repeating the other parts or making changes in meaningful bases of the word such as applying them in an unusual and awkward position. Sometimes, changes are materialized ignoring the principles of language use. Irony is also one of the noticeable language devices. Irony makes natural language structures unnatural by making changes in the field of implications. Predominating via use of irony is done by displacing the known structures and changing valuable bases of words.  So the message is narrated by a part of the text which is not implicitly said. In other words, the author relies on the listener psychic suggestions.  In Farsi eloquence, the word ”irony” is not applied, but its definition is vastly used in Farsi language; although this usage is sometimes like the usage of other Farsi figures. All in all, it is known as a single type and different from the other eloquent figures.  Since, in Farsi writings, these differences and similarities have not been examined yet. Accordingly, this paper addresses the similarities and differences of irony with other eloquent figures. Irony can enter Farsi eloquence with the same subject; of course not as an imported array because ironic words and methods have already been common in Farsi literature. In most cases, however, no title is determined for it. So, it is argued that irony is a kind of dichotomy in word and meaning or face and content which is based on opposition or antithesis and is built on an unexpected and sometimes ridiculous form. 

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The ancient  translations and interpretations of the  Holy Qur'an are among the less recognized capitals of the great treasures of the Persian language, consisting of the various  words of  the different  domains and  periods of this language and  can be a rich  treasure house in order to develop the  Persian language. Terjemah  Tafsir  Tabari is one of the oldest and richest translations and interpretations which has been provided on the basis  of  the book  of  Tafsir  Tabari  and is of particular importance both from the point of  view of the Persian language history and in terms of  the  history of religious texts. However, the edition which is available has some problems considering the regulations of the correction technique and conditions of the Persian language dialectology. In this article, attempts are made to refer to some typical cases and the necessity for re-correction of this valuable book based on another copy is highlighted. 

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Shohar-e AhooKhanoum, written by Ali Mohammad Afghani, is an excellent andexciting novel which potentiallyreflects the social problems. Due to its capacity in representing the specific social problems, this novel has gained a special status in Iran's contemporary narrative literature. The essentialelements of Realism in this novel show that its writer has been greatly influenced by the principles of Realism, and his basic techniques in the development and organization of the story are primarily Realistic. Afghani tries to adapt the events, characters and other aspects of his novel to the main principles of Realism representing the social realities on the basis of his own observations and experiences. By creating lifelike characters and focusing on social events, the writer puts a clear mirror in front of the reader in which he can observe the problems of the society. This article is mainly an attempt to discuss the Realistic aspects of this novel in order to unravel the hidden aspects of events.  

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Semiotics is one of the theories of reading literary texts.  This theory systematically studies the causes and factors involved in the process of production and interpretation of the signs. One of the main topics in semiotics deals with implicit meaning wherein the scholars examine the implied significance of the signs in addition to their explicit significance. Sadegh Chubak’s Tangsir is one of the most successful contemporary Iranian literary novels. Most of the events in this fiction, characters, actions, scenes, and names have implicit and connotative meanings that by analyzing them, the underlying layers of the texts will be discovered. This study attempts to investigate the implicit significance of the novel. To this end, first, a brief explanation of semiotics and implicit significance is put forth. Then the implicit significance of Tangsir will be presented in three categories of: the anticolonial, sociological and mythical. The results of this study indicate that the implicit anticolonial significance of the novel raises the issue of the conspiracies of British colonialism in the southern regions of Iran. The sociological significance of the novel portrays a community drowned in misery, poverty, suppression, and oppression. And the mythical significance of the novel indicates the ritual of sacrificing a cow in Mithraism and the archetype of crossing water in myths.
 

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Moralistic and didactic texts make up a large part of Persian literature. Undoubtedly, if "the inculcation of a particular concept into the mind of the reader and the attempt to persuade and conquer his mind" is not the main purpose of these texts, it is definitely one of their most important goals. In this sense, the poet or writer of such texts tries to persuade the reader and sway his mind to his desired position. This paper has extracted various methods of “capturing the mind of the reader” in Golestan by Saadi, and has divided these methods into four general categories and nine sub-categories. The most frequent statistical frequency in the methods of persuading the audience in Golestan is the argument, with a frequency of 30%, and then the allegory with a frequency of 26,6%, which shows argumentative and literary aspects of the Iranian mind to be active.

 

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With the development of Bakhtin's theory of polyphony in literary criticism, the kind of attitude to literary texts has changed, and according to the needs of modern society, this discourse became the focus of attention of thinkers and literary theorists. Polyphony, with its own meta-lingual potentials, brings with it a new approach, a rethinking of the audience, so that the reader can have a new range of experiences. In this research, employing Bakhtinian dialogical logic, it is possible to examine Sange Saboor as polyphonic and dialogical. Sange Saboor has a special structure that differs from other works of Chubak and utilizes components such as the plurality of voices, the use of stream of consciousness, internal  monologue, intertextuality,  two-way discourse, literary schools, etc. The author of this article attempts to find the features that turn the text polyphonic and explore their function. 
 

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Poetry and painting are two different ways to create works of art, and their close correlation has always been the consideration of art history researchers and literary critics. Sohrab Sepehri is an artist who has tested his taste in both the fields of poetry and painting. Therefore, the present research, targeting a select collection of paintings of trees and Hasht Ketab (Eight Books) of Sepahri, in the light of the theory of Panofsky's Iconology, deals with a comparative and interdisciplinary study of these works. It also focuses on the image of trees in both poetic and painting media to analyze and explain the various structural and semantic aspects of common icons in order to discover the characteristics and connections between his poetic world and the art of painting. The main question is why and how the image of a tree acts differently in two linguistic and visual systems. Sepehri's approach to the element of tree in both poetry and painting contrasts with such concepts as dynamism and static, life and death, rootedness and rootlessness, fertility and infertile, openness, closure, and junction and disjunction whereas it sometimes gets very close to each other in such themes as strangeness and the sense of suspense. Sepehri is under the influence of the paradigm of modern Iranian painting in drawing the image of the tree and its space, in which the space is basically contracted, dark, and desperate. That's why the trees in his works act mostly in the direction of rupture. They move in the direction of disjunction from the world and the essence of existence which can be an allegory of Sepaheri's objective world.  However, the image of the tree in his poems is in line with the dominant concepts - a symbol of growth, freshness, and vitality - at the usual level far from the rhetorical signs and the uncommon domain of connotation in Persian literature. It is in fact an explanation of the ideal world of the poet.