Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Mohammadhasan Hasanzade Niri, ¹
• Fatemeh Golbabaee ²

¹ Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature Allameh Tabataba'i University

² Ph.D. Candidate in Persian language and literature faculty in Allameh Tabataba'i University

Abstract

The reader-response approach, with a particular focus on the role of the reader in understanding and interpreting a text, has broadened the range of receptions of literary works based on the audience's horizon of expectations. In this approach, the literary critic focuses on the variety of possible readings of a text over time, considering the diverse audiences and their cultural and social backgrounds. Additionally, one of the functions of the reader-response approach is to analyze the influence of the assumed audience on the structure of the text during its creation. The assumed audience, or the reception context of a text, can affect the author in the pre-writing stage, shaping the text to align more closely with the audience's expectations. This article employs a qualitative analysis method to investigate two poems by Sa’di the Iranian classical poet. Sa’di composed two elegies in Persian and Arabic, mourning the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate following the Mongol invasion on Baghdad in 1285. The structure and content of these poems can be critically evaluated and compared from the viewpoint of reader-response criticism, considering the role and effect of the audience in creating each literary text. Each of these texts is constructed of common subjects with disparate themes, both in content and stylistic approach. This research demonstrates that the elegy directed at the Arab audience is imbued with empathetic emotions, whereas the elegy for the Persian audience who were spared from the Mongol invasion, in conveyed with restraint.

Keywords

• Sa’di's Persian elegy
• Sa’di's Arabic elegy
• reader-response criticism
• assumed reader

Main Subjects

• نقد