Reflection of Power Criticism in the Poems by ShahabNeyrizi (Content Analysis from the Qajar Period from the Perspective of New Historicism)

Interdiscipline studies and seeking help from theories of critical studies are the ways to make applicable the critical researches of literary texts. New historicism is one of the most novel methods of text analysis in the field of critical studies of literature which believes in historicism of the text and textuality of the history and renovates the mentality and worldview behind the next and understanding the relation between this mentality and structure of the power of its time. In the present paper, the life of Seyyed Ashraf Neyrizi, known as “Shahab” is first introduced and reviewed, and then his most important poem of praise written for Ahmad Shah Qajar in celebration of his return from abroad is analyzed. Shahab is one of the poets of the Qajar period whose poems should be considered as one of the unknown loops of “the return to classical poetry” in the time of constitutional revolution. He had been the Shekhul Islam of Neyriz in Fars province during the Qajar period and had a knack for love poems. Despite the statement of EmadFaqihKermani who says that one can’t be a Sheikhul Islam and at the same time be in love, Shahab was able to be both in love and in fond of saying poems and at the same time the Sheykhul Islam of the Neyriz city. In the present paper, the events and social situation of the period Shahab lived in and his poem of praise are first reviewed, and then the relation between the mentality in the text and the “power” of that time is analyzed based on New Historicism. As a result, rather than praising the Qajar Shah, the poem of praise written by Shahab indicates a secret and sometimes disclosed criticism of the hegemony of the ruling government. Poems of Shahab can be analyzed to achieve an exact image of and knowledge about the era of “return to classical poems” and the literature of the era of the constitutional revolution both in terms of form and meaning behind the text.