The historical, social, and literary significance of folk tales is a generally accepted notion. Since these stories are oral narratives that were later written, they are important in terms of narrative prose and textual structure. The Safavid period is also noteworthy in terms of profiling many of these stories. So far as the style is concerned, the combination of order and prose is one of the characteristics of fictional prose of this period. There are many poems in fiction that can be studied. However, in this study, among the popular stories of the Safavid era, the story of Bustan-i Khayal (Garden of Imagination) is selected as one of the largest and most famous folk tales with a collection of historical tales and stories of demons and fairies, written by Mir Mohammad Taqi Al-Jaafari Al-Husseini nicknamed "Khayal", and also known as Khayal Ahmadabadi. The storyteller lived in the twelfth century AH in the Indian subcontinent. The purpose of this study is to analyze the scattered poems in the story of Bustan-i Khayal, following these objectives: 1. an investigation of the poetic themes and the variety of their use within the story, 2. their connection with the text of the story, 3. identifying the poets of the poems. The research methods are quantitative, qualitative, and analytical. The scattered poems in this work were extracted and analyzed based on the subject, function, and identification of their poets. The findings in the subject section indicate that the descriptive, romantic, emotional, social, critical, epic, prayerful, doctrinal, and praiseworthy topics have the highest to the lowest frequency, respectively. Based on the functions, we can group the poems in relation to the prose of the story into four sections: confirmation, emphasis, completion, and description. Their order is: completion 55%, description 33%, emphasis 9%, and approval 2%. The storyteller tries to use more poems of Saeb, Saadi, Hafiz, Jami, Mowlavi, Ferdowsi, Nizami, Attar, etc.
Research background:
There are several studies conducted in relation to the topic of our research. Aq Qaleh (2016), researched 224 printed Persian texts belonging to this period up to the year 700 (Hijri), of which 136 texts contained Persian poems and 88 works lacked Persian poetry. Soltani (2013) discusses the characteristics of folk tales, the characteristics of Safavid period prose, its related perspectives, and people's interest in the Safavid era to tell and read stories. Faghihi (1994) conducted a PhD dissertation on the collection, translation and description of poems in the second half of the sixth century.
Aims, questions, and assumptions
The study follows these aims:
1. Identifying the poets
2. Examining the poetic topics and the variety of their use within the stories
3. The use of these poems in the text and their relationship with the story
To these aims, the following research questions were raised:
1. What is the literary value and significance of the poems in the prose folk tales of the Safavid period?
2. What is the frequency of using poems in each of the selected folk tales of the Safavid period?
3. During the prose of the story, which of the Persian language poets has been martyred the most?
The hypotheses are:
1. The use of these poems in the context of the story is rhetorical and for the completion of the content of the story.
2. The poetry of famous Persian poets has been martyred in fictional prose.
3. The verses are given in order to complete, confirm, emphasize, and describe the story
Results and discussion
In this literary-fiction story, the author talks about the world of human beings and their connection with the transcendental existence. According to Mahjoub, this story is the longest story in Persian.
"Bustan-i Khayal is one of the greatest folk tales or a collection of historical tales and stories of demons and fairies. It has fifteen volumes written by Mir Mohammad Taqi Al-Jafari Al-Husseini alias Khayal" (Mahjoub, 2014, p. 620). The Safavid period is important in terms of having different types of stories. Safa has introduced a large number of them in his history of literature (Volume 5, Part 3). In the current study, however, scattered verses of this work have been extracted and examined in terms of their subject and function. Thematically, these verses have been categorized from various descriptive, romantic, admonishing, social, critical, epic, prayerful, doctrinal, and praiseworthy aspects. So far as their functions are concerned, they are categorized into four groups of confirmation, emphasis, completion, and description.
Conclusion
According to the descriptive verse statistics, love affairs are in the first place, and advice is in the third place.
The manner the verses are used in the narration of the story shows that these verses are directly related to the text of the story; that is, if it is a matter of wisdom and advice, the verses that refer to advice and counsel are given, and if it is lyrical and romantic, emotional and romantic verses are used. However, if it is an epic, epic poems related to heroism and battle are included in the text of the story. Examining how the verses are used and functioned in the text of the story, it was found that the narrator has included the verses in the text according to the confirmation, emphasis, completion, and description of the story. Poems in the completion section with 55%, description 33%, emphasis 9% and 2% confirmation have the highest to the lowest distribution, respectively. The storyteller's effort in using poems is manifested through verses that are in the category of proverbs and are common in the language of the people. Of the 592 verses, 190 verses, which account for 32.09% of the total number of poems, contribute to the poems that have become popular. Apart from Ahmadabadi's imaginary poems, most of the verses are from Saeb, Saadi, Hafez, Jami, Rumi, Ferdowsi, Nezami, Attar, etc., respectively. Few verses have been recited from Kaleem Kashani, Amir Khosrow Dehlavi, Abu Saeed Abolkhair, Asir Shahrestani, Bidel Dehlavi, Milli Mashhadi, Naziri Neyshabouri, Mohtasham Kashani, Anvari, and others.
References
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Khayal Gojarati, M. T. (2013). Boostan-i- khayal (edited by Seyed Kamal Haj Seyed Javadi and Pouran Zeinali). Pazooheshkadeh Honar.
Mahjoob, M.J. (2014). Iranian Folk Literature (edited by Hassan Zolfaghari). Cheshmeh.
Safa, Z. (1967). History of Literature in Iran. University of Tehran.
Safari Aq Qaleh, A. (2016). Scattered Persian poems in texts up to 700 Hijri. Mahmoud Afshar.
Shamisa, S. (1997). Stylistics of prose. Mitra.