مقالات انگلیسی

Structuring the macro fiction of mantiq al-tayr ('conference of the birds') by Farid al-din Attar

 (12th c. persian poet)

Leila Sadeghi

Department of Linguistics, University of Tehran, Iran

ABSTRACT

Cognitive poetics includes a theory of analogical mapping which shows employing different skills of seeing similarity, relationships, and structural systems (Holyoak, Thagard 1995; Freeman 1997). This paper studies the various functions of attributive, relational and system mapping in structuring the text world of "the conference of the birds" (1177), a well-known Persian poem, by cognitive poetics approach. Moreover, it examines how macro fiction could be created by operation of system mapping in the structuring of such a text. Not only macro-fiction is the idea of holistic structures and their specific properties of different macro-structures, but also is considered as a layer of patchy structures joined together by some textual cognitive elements to build an unsaid story (Sadeghi, 2011). 

This research assumes to study the cognitive characteristics which affect the function of system mapping, as a main feature of poem, to create macro fiction. Studying the text world by this approach could provide a suitable device for analyzing a text and its macro structures through conceptual mappings which is a step forward in the area of literary critic.

Key words: text world, cognitive poetics, system mapping, macro fiction.