A Comparative Examination of Poetic Language in the Works of Sadeq Chubak and Houshang Golshiri

Abstract

One of the salient features of contemporary fiction is its increasing movement toward poeticization and literariness. Authors of such narratives, by incorporating poetic elements and their expressive capacities into fiction and by attending to the literary dimensions of the text, have succeeded in opening a novel pathway from story to poetry—so much so that the reader, while engaging with these narratives, clearly perceives their distinction from traditional stories and their growing affinity with poetry. The present study, employing a descriptive–analytical method based on data collected through library research, aims to conduct a comparative analysis of poetic language in the stories of Sadeq Chubak and Houshang Golshiri. According to the findings, Chubak—through his attentiveness to the subtleties of the Persian language, the influence of poetic elements on the literariness of narrative, the precision in selecting imaginative tropes and related expressions, concise and vivid descriptions, and colloquial similes and metaphors—achieves a prose style that draws simultaneously on the richness of classical literature and the vibrancy and variety of everyday urban speech. He skillfully weaves written and colloquial language together without compromising the artistic unity of his work, and, given his realist orientation, employs poetic elements proportionately alongside colloquial speech in his narratives. In contrast to Chubak, Houshang Golshiri—who himself is deeply preoccupied with poetic concerns—at times, as in the story Khāneh-ye Rowshanān (“The House of the Enlightened”), draws heavily on poetic imagery and verbal subtleties, thereby bringing prose significantly closer to poetry.