Rhetorical Criticism of Ferdowsi’s Shāhnāmeh from Semantics Perspective

The basis of semantics is how the words fit the context and its elements are syntactic structures. The literary masterpieces in each language can be a great source for investigation into semantics. The present paper aims at a semantic-based investigation into Shāhnāmeh written by Ferdowsi as one of the important masterpieces in Persian literature, so as to discover some of the rhetorical mysteries of Persian language. The issue discussed in this paper is that in order to discover and describe the principles of and criteria for beauty of Persian literature masterpieces from a rhetorical viewpoint, it is essential to study such texts in an inductive way. The theory presented byAbd al-Qaher Jurjani, the greatest theorist of rhetoric in Iran and Islamic world, is the basis of this paper. He believes that rhetorical influence is achieved by using syntactic structures of a language and calls his theory semantics of syntax. Considering the theory of this scholar, some branches of linguistics such as discourse analysis, pragmatics, Grice and Halliday theories, as well as some literary schools like formalism, this paper attempts to show that many beauties of Shāhnāmeh depend on its syntactic techniques which should be discussed in semantics. It is concluded that in order to interpret Persian literary texts using semantics, one cannot solely rely on the traditional basics of this science and the theory presented by Abd al-Qaher Jurjani should also be used. Considering lack of traditional rhetorical studies in discovery of rhetorical techniques, it is essential to find out the basics of semantics in Persian literature by investigating into Persian literary masterpieces.