Document Type : short article

Author

• mohammad hadi khaleghzadeh

Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature of Islamic Azad University, Yasouj Branch, Yasouj, Iran

Abstract

Ferdowsi, in the introduction to the story of Rostam and Esfandiar in Shahnameh, identifies “bulbul” (literary meaning the nightingale) as the narrator of Esfandiar's tale, and in one of the verses of this introduction, he states: 
I heard a story from bulbul
that recounted the words of the ancients.
Some commentators of the Shahnameh have considered bulbul to be the same as the bird known for its beautiful song; however, for the first time, Jalal Khaleqi-Motlagh (1993) proposed a hypothesis that bulbul may not be the bird, but a title for a narrator who has reached a level of mastery in storytelling (Khaleqi-Motlagh, 2009: 54). The researcher aims in this article to examine the process and trajectory of this theory and to add new evidence to the previous testimonies.

Keywords

• bulbul
• narrator
• Rostam and Esfandiar
• Shahnameh
• Ferdowsi
• bards‎

Main Subjects

• متون حماسی