An Investigation of Structural Deviations in Attar Neishabouri’s Sonnets (Based on Geoffrey Leech’s Linguistic Theory)

Abstract

One of the main factors in the emergence ofa literary style is the structural aberration and its frequency ina work which makes its language recognizable and prominent.Utilizing newstylistic methods foranalyzing literary texts paves the way for accessing an accurate knowledge of these texts.Addressing a variety of aberrations is one of the new ways of examining the style of texts that explores the literary work in all its linguistic, literary,andsemantic layers.In this article,fromthe linguistic point of view of Jeffrey Leach(1969)on structural aberrations,Attar Neyshabouri's lyric poems have been studied, and adescriptive-statistical analysis is provided.Statistical analysis of various aspects of phonetic and lexical aberrations in the first200 lyric poems of Attar Neyshabouri yielded important results.The high frequency of new Sufi compositions in Attar's sonnets, which is one of the stylistic highlights of his works,shows that Attar is a poet committed to mystical values and principles.This study also shows that phonetic aberrations, especially techniques such as elimination and reduction in the structure of words due to the need for sonance and weight restrictions, have been used more than any phonetic element in Attar's lyric poems.Attar has also devoted a significant part of his mystical themes and experiences to newly fashioned compositions with a Sufi approach.It is worth mentioning that these compositions created by Attar's Sufi mind and language have not been used in any other prose or poetry beforehand.Only about20%of the compositions created by Attar have been resonated in later poets’ works, and the rest of these compositions remain peculiar to Attar's poetry.