Document Type : علمی- پژوهشی

Author

• saeed karimi

Assistant professor of Persian language and literature/ University of Payam e Noor/ Shabestar. Iran

Abstract

Artistic games with words form the central part of Nizami's aesthetic. The major share of these games are played in Khamsa with the name of fictional characters. With the help of 41 word names, Nizami has performed 400 cases of artistic games. Most items of games have been conducted with Shirin, Shekar, Mahan, Shabdiz, Goor (Bahram) and Leili. Nizami employed literary arrays such as proportion ambiguity, total pun, partial pun, repetition, derivation pun, pseudo-derivation pun, redundant pun, subsequent pun, and difference pun in long vowels (from the most to the least) to run artistic games. Shedding light on these games would reveal the essence of Nizami's art and power. In addition to artistic aesthetics, the poet has followed other objectives too. For instance, with the help of these games, he has supported fictional atmosphere to attract the attention of his readers. Apparently, the poet has deliberately played with the word names, but in some cases the game has been so appropriately that the reader takes it as granted. The high frequency of games with word names is the major stylistic feature of Nizami's works.

Highlights

Artistic Games with Word Names; Reflections on one of Nizami's Stylistic Features

Saeed Karimi Gharababa

Assistant Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Payam-e Noor University

Extended abstract

Artistic games with words form the central part of Nizami's poetry aesthetics. The major share of these games are played in Khamsa with the name of fictional characters. With the help of 41 word names, Nizami has performed 400 cases of artistic games. Most items of games have been conducted with Shirin, Shekar, Mahan, Shabdiz, Goor (Bahram) and Leili. Nizami employed literary arrays such as proportion ambiguity, total pun, partial pun, repetition, derivation pun, pseudo-derivation pun, redundant pun, subsequent pun, and difference pun in long vowels (from the most to the least) to run artistic games. Shedding light on these games would reveal the essence of Nizami's art and power. In addition to artistic aesthetics, the poet has followed other objectives too. For instance, with the help of these games, he has supported fictional atmosphere to attract the attention of his readers. Apparently, the poet has deliberately played with the word names, but in some cases the game has been so appropriate that the reader takes it as granted. The high frequency of games with word names is the major stylistic feature of Nizami's works.

In Persian literature, Nizami is recognized as a difficult, pompous poet. One of the reasons of this difficult tone is using numerous literary arrays in his works. Nizami catches any opportunity to construct literary aesthetics. One such opportunity is the names of fictional characters. Hence, the topic of the present study is the word names. Nizami takes word names as a novel advice to create literary arrays. Here the poet invents a new literary array compatible with any word name and thereby adds to the aesthetical values of his poems. In this article, we have called these literary arrays as artistic games and we have examined various forms of these games which are related to word names. Using word names, Nizami has arranged word games for four hundred times. The highest number of games is dedicated to names such as Shirin, Shekar, Mahan, Shabdiz, Gour (Bahram) and Leili. Nizami employed literary arrays such as proportion ambiguity, total pun, partial pun, repetition, derivation pun, pseudo-derivation pun, redundant pun, subsequent pun, and difference pun in long vowels (from the most to the least) to run artistic games. Nizami has used any small potential chance to run an artistic game with word names. As well as the poetic aesthetics, Nizami has followed other aims too. By these word games related to fictional characters, he tries to strengthen the fictional atmosphere and entering within the characters. He has also attempted to draw his readers’ attention towards the characters’ behavior. These artistic games have been employed deliberately and they imply some hard effort exerted by the poet, but they are put with the poems so naturally that readers may not notice them at the first glance. Needless to say, the high frequency of the artistic games with word names in Khamse proves a stylistic feature for Nizami’s storytelling.

Keywords:Nizami, artistic games, word name, character, story.

References

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Keywords

• Nizami
• artistic games
• word name
• character
• story

20.1001.1.22517979.1398.72.240.11.7

Main Subjects

• Persian Rhetoric and Grammar