Motaleat-e-zaban-e-farsi

Motaleat-e-zaban-e-farsi

Forouzanfar’s Practical Critical Approach to Classical Persian Poetry

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
moslem Tahehrimagham 1
Ahmad khatami 2
ghodratollah taheri 3
1 PhD student in Persian Language and Literature, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran (corresponding author).
2 Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.
3 Associate Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.
10.22034/jmzf.2026.244616
Abstract

1. Introduction
Badi‘ al-Zaman Forouzanfar was one of the pioneering and meticulous scholars in the field of literary research who, throughout his scholarly works on classical Persian poetry and poets, expressed critical views and offered analyses that are of considerable value and significance from the perspective of practical criticism. Awareness of Forouzanfar’s perspective on Persian poetry and of the nature of his critical method in this field is necessary and essential. Therefore, a study was required in which his practical critiques would be extracted from his scholarly works, categorized, and analyzed, and subsequently questions and issues such as the following would be addressed: 1. To what extent did Forouzanfar devote attention to poetry criticism? 2. Upon which critical criteria were Forouzanfar’s practical critiques of Persian poetry based? And 3. Which approaches received the greatest attention from Forouzanfar in his criticism of Persian poetry?

2. Methodology
The method of this research is descriptive-analytical and library-based.

3. Discussion
Examining such research works is significant from several perspectives. First, given the breadth of Forouzanfar’s intellectual outlook and the extensive scope of his knowledge, he possessed a deeper and more comprehensive view of literary works; therefore, his works ought to be regarded as sources rich in insightful observations for other researchers of Persian literature. Second, the relative lack of literary criticism and theory in the history of Persian literature further underscores the significance of scholars such as Forouzanfar, who were at times pioneers in certain schools of criticism, such as the criticism and interpretation of literary texts. Another factor that highlights the importance of Forouzanfar’s scholarly works is this researcher’s temporal precedence over academic scholars and the fact that his scholarly career coincided with the emergence of modern research in Persian literature, placing Forouzanfar in the position of a guide and pioneer for researchers who came after him. In his critical method, he consciously sought to prepare the ground for a form of criticism different from the taste-based methods of his predecessors, and he should be regarded “alongside Taghizadeh and Ghazvini as one of the literary scholars and researchers who combined the principles of classical criticism with modern critical methods and paved the way toward achieving a rigorous and systematic form of criticism” (Dehghani, 2000: 24). In criticizing and analyzing Persian poetry, Forouzanfar sometimes employed several critical approaches in combination. For example, he used structural criticism, whose functions consist of “1. extracting the internal structure of the work, 2. demonstrating the existing relationships among its components, and 3. demonstrating the signification contained within the overall structure of the work” (Emami, 2003: 28), to analyze the language and themes of poetry.

4. Conclusion
Forouzanfar was among the first scholars to subject individual Persian poetic works to scientific and practical critical examination. He paid relatively little attention to impressionistic and general forms of criticism; the most important and recurrent types of his criticism include: 1. rhetorical criticism of poetry, 2. criticism of poetic language, 3. influence and reception criticism, 4. biographical-dictionary and literary-historical criticism, 5. typological and stylistic criticism of poetry, 6. criticism of the development of genres and poetic forms in Persian poetry, 7. structural criticism of poetry, 8. thematic criticism of poetry, and 9. ethical and impressionistic criticism of poetry. The sources and theoretical foundations underlying these perspectives can be identified as: 1. classical rhetoric, 2. Forouzanfar’s own internal scholarly knowledge, and 3. to a very limited extent, attention to the ordering and classification of the modern sciences. Forouzanfar sometimes employed critical methods in an integrated and combined manner in his criticism of poetry. Almost all of his authored works, as well as the introductions he wrote for the poetry of various poets, contain critical perspectives. The three fundamental approaches in Forouzanfar’s practical criticism of poetry are influence and reception criticism, thematic criticism, and rhetorical criticism. In his thematic criticism, Forouzanfar focused more extensively on the interpretation of mystical poetry; considering that Forouzanfar’s interpretations historically preceded the widespread development of hermeneutics as a branch of literary criticism, precedence in this field belongs to him.
Keywords
Literary criticism
practical criticism
literary research
poetry criticism
Forouzanfar
 
کتاب­‌شناسی
الف: کتاب­‌ها
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  • Receive Date 04 April 2026
  • Revise Date 06 May 2026
  • Accept Date 25 May 2026