https://clrj.modares.ac.ir/ Comparative Literature Research en daily 1 Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0330 Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0330 https://clrj.modares.ac.ir/article_28257.html This article employs a comparative-analytical approach to examine the concept of the Faustian situation in Nima Yushij’s epic The House of Serivili. The main research question is how Nima, in his poetic confrontation with one of the most significant allegories in western literature, Goethe’s Faust, redefines the human-devil conflict and transcends the cliché of human temptation. Through and intertextual reading and based on narrative elements such as the devil’s entry, dialogue structure, and the moral relations of the characters. It is demonstrated that Faust succumbs to temptation in his quest for meaning and falls before Mephistopheles, while Serivili, with existential awareness and ethical resistance, not only avoids being deceived but also challenges the devil’s words. The research method is qualitative-interpretive, and the analysis is based on the comparison of the narrative situation in both works. Metaphysical themes and the philosophical discourse of resistance to evil. The finding of this study suggest the Nima implicitly draws upon the Faustian model and rewrites its conceptual framework, establishing a Faustian position of resistance, a situation where the Eastern man is not conquered by temptation but becomes the master of his dialogue with evil. This article aims to contribute to the intercultural re-reading of modern Persian literature in relation to classical Western narratives, focusing in the fundamental similarities and differences between the tow works. https://clrj.modares.ac.ir/article_28264.html Abstract:Travelogues, serving as historical-literary documents, unveil aspects of the social life of societies that often remain hidden in other sources. Employing an analytical-comparative approach, this study examines attitudes towards women in two prominent works of classical Islamic travel literature: the Safarnama of Nasir Khusraw (5th century AH) and the Rihla of Ibn Battuta (8th century AH). Through the extraction and analysis of all references to women in both texts, the findings indicate that Nasir Khusraw, influenced by Ismaili religious bias and a focus on the moral dimensions of travel, largely overlooks women or marginalizes them within the narrative. Their presence is restricted to rare and indirect instances, such as allusions to wealth or association with aristocratic status. In contrast, Ibn Battuta, exhibiting greater freedom, heightened anthropological curiosity, and broader access to social spheres, portrays women in diverse roles, including political spies, professional weavers, among others. However, the study's findings reveal that both authors primarily define women through criteria such as beauty, wealth, or association with rulers. Such perspectives reflect the enduring patriarchal structure of the Islamic world. These differences stem not only from the authors' personalities and ideological positions but also indicate relative evolutions in gender discourse among writers in the Islamic world between the 5th and 8th centuries AH. https://clrj.modares.ac.ir/article_28601.html The symbolic opposition between light and darkness as representations of good and evil is one of the most persistent structures in philosophical, theological, and artistic traditions. Across religious systems, light has been associated with truth, presence, knowledge, and proximity to the divine, while darkness has signified absence, ignorance, separation, and moral deficiency. This study presents a comparative analysis of the aesthetics of light and darkness in Suhrawardi’s Ḥikmat al-Ishrāq (The Philosophy of Illumination) and John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. The research aims to examine how metaphysical concepts of light and darkness are transformed into aesthetic and symbolic structures that articulate good and evil in Islamic philosophy and Christian religious poetry. Employing a qualitative, descriptive–analytical approach within a thematic comparative framework, the study demonstrates that in both systems, beauty functions as a mediating force between truth and ethics, while darkness signifies degrees of ontological, moral, or perceptual absence. Despite differences in epistemology and language, both thinkers articulate a shared aesthetic logic in which light constitutes the foundation of being, meaning, and moral orientation. https://clrj.modares.ac.ir/article_28607.html Extended AbstractThis study investigates Persian loanwords related to music that entered the Arabic lexical tradition and were recorded in major Arabic dictionaries. Linguistic contact between Persian and Arabic, particularly from the early Islamic centuries onward, resulted in the transmission of numerous cultural and technical terms. Music, as one of the important fields of cultural exchange, reflects this interaction clearly. Many musical terms that originated in Persian were adopted into Arabic and later documented in classical lexicographical works. Examining these terms not only clarifies the linguistic processes of borrowing and adaptation but also reveals aspects of the historical exchange between the Persian and Arab musical traditions.The main objective of this research is to identify and analyze Persian‑origin musical terms that appear in Arabic dictionaries and to examine the linguistic mechanisms through which they entered Arabic. The study also aims to determine how these terms were recorded, interpreted, and sometimes reanalyzed by Arab lexicographers. By focusing on the lexical evidence preserve https://clrj.modares.ac.ir/article_28608.html This study examines the functions of black humor in the novels "Season of Migration to the North" by Tayeb Saleh and "Animal Farm" by George Orwell. The aim of this article is to analyze how black humor is used to criticize power structures, colonialism, and tyranny. The present study, adopting a descriptive-analytical method and relying on the theoretical framework of black humor, examines both works with the aim of analyzing components such as poverty and hardship, class divide, incompetent rulers, patriotism, resistance and anti-oppression, and sleeplessness. Despite the different historical and geographical contexts of the two novels (colonizer-colonized in Saleh's novel and the misguided revolution in Orwell's work), both authors use black humor to expose a truth: the gap between genuine ideals and corrupted realities. In "The Season of Migration to the North", black humor is manifested in the confrontation of Mustafa Said's character with the Western world and in his self-destruction, and depicts the bitterness of the colonial relationship and the post-colonial identity crisis. In "Animal Farm", Orwell, by creating black humor, ridicules the process of the revolution's gradual deviation from the initial ideals (equality) to a new authoritarian system. The findings of the research show that black humor is used as the main narrative strategy in both works to express despair, protest and warning. https://clrj.modares.ac.ir/article_28609.html Roland Barthes proposed the theory of the five codes for analyzing literary texts. Two of these codes—the proairetic (action) code and the hermeneutic code—are related to the narrative dimension of a literary work and its author, while the remaining three—the semantic, symbolic, and cultural codes—are concerned with meaning, other textual dimensions, and the reader. William Blake’s poems The Chimney Sweeper(s) and Nazik al-Malaika’s Ma’sata al-Atfal (The Tragedy of Children), both of which center on the suffering of children, reveal notable similarities at both the narrative and semantic levels and can be interpreted within Barthes’s theoretical framework. This paper examines the theme of child suffering in these works in order to uncover their narrative and semantic layers and to explain their similarities and differences. Adopting a descriptive-analytical approach and drawing on the American school of comparative literature, the study focuses on the proairetic, hermeneutic, and semantic codes. It ultimately addresses the question of how child suffering is represented in the poetry of two authors who belonged to different cultures and historical periods. The findings indicate that both poets foreground a bitter truth: childhood, rather than being a time of joy and play, becomes the source of profound suffering. Through a sequence of actions, riddles, and semantic connotations, both poets articulate this suffering. However, Blake adopts a socially critical perspective that allows for hope and liberation, whereas al-Malaika presents a philosophical and tragic vision marked by despair and the absence of escape. https://clrj.modares.ac.ir/article_28725.html In folklore, there exist heroes who stand on the boundary between two opposing realms (death/life, human/supernatural, nature/culture) and play a decisive role in advancing the narrative and testing the hero. This article analyzes two such "liminal women": the "Weaver Fairy" in the Iranian Folklore Eternal Life and "Yuki-Onna" (Snow Woman) in Japanese folklore. The aim of the study is to identify the pattern of functions of these heroes within the structure of rites of passage. The research method is descriptive-analytical and comparative, based on van Gennep's three-stage model and its extension by Victor Turner. The findings show that although the structure of these tales follows the classical pattern of passage, the two female heroes do not achieve full reintegration and remain in a state of suspension. Furthermore, the comparative analysis reveals that the two liminal women exhibit differences in their passage stages due to differences in the cosmology of the two cultures. The "Weaver Fairy," given the Iranian tradition (Zoroastrian-Islamic), which considers the entry of supernatural beings into the human world as exceptional and forbidden, is condemned to rejection and marginalization. Possessing "epistemic agency" (preserving the hidden knowledge of immortality) and avoiding the performance of feminine roles, she strives to maintain her authority, but ultimately falls victim to structural violence and is abducted and eliminated. In contrast, "Yuki-Onna," within the Japanese tradition (Shinto-Buddhism), where the boundary between human and supernatural has always been fluid and permeable, actively enters the human world by exercising "performative agency" and ultimately leaves it voluntarily. https://clrj.modares.ac.ir/article_28726.html Abstract This comparative study examines how “art” and the “secondary imagination” function as a resolution to the enduring tension between human agency and indifference toward a transient world in Omar Khayyam’s quatrains and the play Buddha by Kazantzakis. The point of departure of this study is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s theory of the “secondary imagination,” which conceptualizes artistic creation as a conscious and unifying process, distinguishing it from primary imagination and mere memory. Within this framework, Khayyam’s quatrains and the play Buddha by Kazantzakis are analyzed in terms of their representation of impermanence, suffering, and the possibility of liberation. The study employs a qualitative methodology based on inductive analysis, drawing upon extensive library and documentary sources. Findings indicate that Khayyam, through poetic imagination, interrogates the instability of the world while enacting an artistic mode of engagement, whereas Kazantzakis, by integrating Buddhist teachings with dramatic form, depicts the conflict between social action and Buddhist detachment in a ritualistic and carnivalesque mode. In both texts, the secondary imagination mediates experience and philosophy into an aesthetically coherent structure, establishes critical distance from reality, and enables avenues for philosophical and artistic resistance. Consequently, art in these works operates not merely as a reflection of the world but as an active process that reconciles human agency with indifference, offering a mode of engagement that is both contemplative and transformative. https://clrj.modares.ac.ir/article_28737.html The mask is a fundamental device in contemporary poetry and one of the most significant artistic strategies for expressing social and ideological concepts. Through this technique, the poet, by concealing themselves behind another’s façade, not only reflects the general concerns of the contemporary era but also portrays socio-political realities with a profound, critical, and conscious perspective. In this regard, the authors of this study employ an analytical-comparative approach to examine classical masks in the verses of Ajud Mujbal Al-Khafaji (contemporary Iraqi poet) and Mehdi Akhavan-Sales (contemporary Persian poet)—poets who have tasted the bitter flavor of oppression, suffocation, and tyranny in their homelands.These figures, who exist as symbols of values in mythological, literary, religious, philosophical, narrative, and allegorical domains with their original and familiar appearances, are transformed in contemporary poetry through transmutation (change in the traditional structure of the mask; change in their positioning) and reimagining (the poet’s application of the mask according to their own viewpoint; depiction of contemporary concerns) into symbolic tools for delineating socio-political issues.The ultimate finding of this study demonstrates that Khafaji and Akhavan-Sales transcend the boundaries of familiar narratives and established roles by altering the traditional structure of the mask and reimagining their narrative frameworks (absent/addressee/speaker). Within the context of contemporary poetry, these figures transform into conscious, dissenting, and contemplative masks, thereby reflecting the crises, thoughts, and aspirations of modern humanity and giving meaning to the continuity of tradition with the dynamism of the present moment. https://clrj.modares.ac.ir/article_28773.html The use of similes constitutes a fundamental element of literary imagination and imagery as one of the pillars of rhetoric. In addition to serving as an ornamental device, it functions as a means of expressing the underlying worldview and intellectual framework of the text. As such, the simile serves as an effective tool for examining the literary and conceptual dimensions of works. An analysis of its structural elements, particularly the principal components of simile and the tertium comparationis, reveals the prevailing ideas and worldviews within these texts. The ritual beliefs and intellectual traditions of India and Iran in the millennia before the Common Era are reflected in the rhetorical forms, particularly similes, found in their ancient religious texts and sacred hymns. With a comparative and descriptive–analytical approach, this study explores the similes used in the Rigveda and Avesta, the oldest extant texts of the Indo-Iranian peoples, to identify the intellectual and cultural similarities and differences between them. The results show that similes in an array of forms significantly influence these texts' rhetorical features. Furthermore, the two primary components of simile and the tertium comparationis reflect both different and shared worldviews; at times, they are indicative of the two peoples' independence and development of thought, while at other times, they are anchored in their early unity. https://clrj.modares.ac.ir/article_28829.html The present study, adopting a comparative-analytical approach and drawing on the theoretical tenets of literary impressionism, compares two stories: "Youth" by Joseph Conrad and "Tan-e Abi, Tanabi" by Bijan Najdi. Literary impressionism, which has its roots in the visual arts, breaks with linear narration and emphasizes the recording of sensory experiences, fragmented narrative structures, and the exploration of individual self-awareness. Instead of physically representing reality, it employs language to evoke the feeling and idea of things. The research methodology is qualitative, employing comparative content analysis; the data have been analyzed using thematic analysis, based on the ideas set forth by Rebecca Bowler in her book Literary Impressionism (2016). The findings indicate that both stories are grounded in the principle of “sensory impression” rather than objective reportage. However, their fundamental difference lies in how they engage with reality: although Conrad represents physical phenomena (such as fire and storm) through the sensory perception of the narrator (Marlow), he does not go beyond the framework of objective events. By contrast, Najdi, transcending the boundaries of realism, intermingles reality and fantasy, creating an imaginary creature named “Pepsi” from within a modern industrial commodity. Furthermore, Conrad employs the techniques of “narrative framing” and “delayed decoding,” whereas Najdi enters directly into the mental world of the character (Mansour). In conclusion, it can be said that Najdi has indigenized the devices of literary impressionism within a more surrealistic and poetic space, unlike Conrad, who remains committed to the representation of physical events (albeit through a sense-centered perspective). https://clrj.modares.ac.ir/article_28927.html Situated within the framework of the American School of Comparative Literature, this study examines the discourse of resistance in contemporary Arabic poetry, focusing on the linguistic and discursive mechanisms through which resistance is articulated. The analysis is grounded in close, text-centered reading while remaining attentive to the historical and social contexts in which the poems emerge, without assuming any direct relationship of influence or intertextual transmission between the texts. Within this framework, resistance is not approached as a merely reactive response to crisis, but as a coherent semantic system through which poetic language gives form to experiences of steadfastness, perseverance, and collective agency.Methodologically, the study adopts a descriptive–analytical approach based on a close reading of two poetic odes and a comparative examination of the shared constitutive elements of the discourse of resistance. The analysis shows that, despite differences in historical and social conditions, both poets construct a common constellation of concepts underpinning this discourse. These include the foregrounding of collective agency, the articulation of will as inseparable from the continuity of life, the rejection of stasis and submission, and the reconfiguration of horizons of hope and futurity.The findings indicate that these elements are articulated differently in each text according to their contexts of production. of return. The study thus highlights the capacity of contemporary Arabic poetry to articulate the discourse of resistance across diverse semantic horizons while remaining grounded in shared conceptual foundations.