@article { author = {Jabri, soussan}, title = {Signs of Forethought and Conscious Composition in Masnavi}, journal = {New Literary Studies}, volume = {53}, number = {2}, pages = {23-47}, year = {2020}, publisher = {Ferdowsi University of Mashhad}, issn = {2783-252X}, eissn = {2783-252X}, doi = {10.22067/jls.v53i2.82557}, abstract = {Extended AbstractIntroductionIs art created consciously or unconsciously? This question always sparks controversies amongst artists, researchers, philosophers, and psychologists. Nonetheless, as an intricate phenomenon, art demands both consciousness and unconsciousness to come into existence, and manifest attributes of both realms.Poetry is the most prominent artistic form of the ancient world, and to our predecessors, thinkers, Sufis, and poets were educators. Therefore, the vast portion of the ancient literature is didactic, and poetry has been used as a rhetorical devise to effectively convey the poets’ beliefs and instructions to the audience or the readers. Needless to say, didactics requires forethought and conscious thoughts of the educators on what they aim to teach.Masnavi is amongst the greatest Sufist didactic texts. Surprisingly, some believe that Masnavi comes from a free stream of consciousness and, as a result, they describe Masnavi as a chaotic, disorganized and opaque work.Chaotically, he delivers an ordinary tale by means of a chain of semantic and sentimental blocks (Abdul-Hakim, 1977). And sometimes researchers have doubts and offer contradictory observations; … Rumi has surrendered himself to inspiration to see where it gets him. However, this does not imply that Rumi does not engage his conscious thoughts. As he has mastered several levels of knowledge simultaneously, ‘no task stops Him from doing other tasks’. The proof is that he returns to speech whenever he wants (Zekavati Gharehguzlu, 2007).Theoretical FrameworkThis research adopts a stance opposing the contradictory views of those who argue that Rumi’s poetry comes from the unconscious and, therefore, find it chaotic and disorganized. Hence, this research seeks the signs that can manifest the author’s total consciousness in the process of composing his complicated and tatted Masnavi. First, the roots of such hasty evaluations such as awareness of Rumi’s frenzy, semantic confusion of some terms, blurring the boundary between reality and illusion, and Masnavi’s inaccessibility will be reviewed. Then, the signs that signify Rumi’s conscious and forethought toted process of composing Masnavi will be discussed.MethodThe methodology adopted is content analysis. Firstly, the contents of researches are analyzed that – implicitly or explicitly –find Masnavi chaotic and the reason is that, they said Masnavi was composed in a state of unconsciousnesss. Then, the content is analyzed to find the three types of signs of meditation and conscious composition: 1) poetics of Masnavi, 2) narrative elements in the tales of Masnavi, and 3) the internal coherence of the structure and content of Masnavi.Results and DiscussionIn the research conducted on Masnavi, there are some arguments which appear to be irrelevant such as the claim that the text is disorganized and chaotic for it was composed in a state of frenzy and unconsciousness. By analyzing these arguments, we realized the researchers’ prejudice: prior awareness of researchers of Rumi’s frenzy, semantic confusion between association of meanings and free association, ignoring the relation between free association and the stream of consciousness, ignoring the internal monologue and its relation with the stream of consciousness, ignoring the breaking of frontier between reality and illusion in Masnavi, attributing unconscious composing to Masnavi and supposing that Masnavi  is surrealist text, ignoring the inability of language in conveying Rumi’s deep Sufist ideas, difficult perception of Masnavi's language for today’s readers, difficulty of understanding Masnavi and the need to be fond of Masnavi, and the necessity of contemplation to the era that Masnavi was created.ConclusionAfter putting aside such hasty evaluations and scrutinizing the text, findings signify Rumi’s conscious and forethoughtated composition of Masnavi. The signs found can be divided into three groups:First; poetics of Masnavi: didactics, reciting in public tradition, spending some time alone before preaching, the subjects central to Sufist thought, Masnavi’s narrative-article nature, allegorical discursive method, processing extradiegetic dialogues, dividing a massive thought into smaller parts, repetition, intratextual references, break from and return to the topic, conducting the flow the talks consciously and selection of the tales.Second; processing narrative elements such as recreating the tales, titling, revealing the story plots, creating suspense, processing diegetic dialogues, autonomy of the tales, internal coherence of the plots, narrative delay, harmony between the subject and the themes, concluding and closing the tales.Third; structure and content’s internal links, keywords, key sentences, key lines, structuring the text, links between the tale and the text.The conclusion derived from these findings imply the conscious forethoughtated, and logical composition of Masnavi. The style of composing the speech elements in Masnavi show that this style is influenced by, on the one hand, Rumi’s worldview and his intellectual priorities and, on the other hand, the mood of his audience. He has composed Masnavi based on a conscious and forethoughtated plan by paying close attention to the diverse aspects of the text and his audience. Therefore, we may say that Rumi, during the fourteen years he spent on composing Masnavi, had been conscious and fully aware of both the process of composition and the details of his work and had been keeping a vigilant eye on his audience and the plan of his work.}, keywords = {Forethought,Conscious Composition,stream of consciousness,Rumi,Masnavi}, title_fa = {نشان‌های پیش‌اندیشی و آگاهانه سُرودن در مثنوی معنوی}, abstract_fa = {برخی از سرودن مثنوی در حالت جذبه و ناخودآگاهی سخن­گفته و آن را متنی آشفته توصیف­ کرده­­اند. زمینه­ های برخی پیشداوری ­ها عبارتند از؛ پیش ­آگاهی از شوریدگی مولانا، آمیختن تداعی معانی و تداعی آزاد، آمیختن تداعی آزاد و شیوۀ جریان سیال ذهن، آمیختن تک­ گویی درونی و شیوۀ جریان سیال ذهن، نادیدن شکستن مرز واقعیت و خیال در مثنوی، ناخودآگاه و ویژگی­های سوررئالیسم در مثنوی، نارسایی، و دیریابی زبان و همچنین دیرآشنایی مثنوی. نشان­ه ای پیش­اندیشی نیز در سه دسته جای­ می­گیرند: دستۀ نخست؛ ماهیت و شیوۀ سخن در مثنوی؛ از جمله: تعلیمی بودن، سنت مجلس گویی، خلوت پیش از مجلس وعظ، کلیت موضوعات محوری در اندیشۀ صوفیانه، داستان- مقاله بودن مثنوی، شیوۀ استدلال تمثیلی، پردازش گفتگوهای برون داستانی، تقسیم یک اندیشه کلی به اجزای کوچک­تر، تکرار، ارجاعات درون متنی، گسست و بازگشت به رشتۀ سخن، هدایت هشیارانۀ جریان سخن، گزینش داستان­ها. دستۀ دوم؛ پردازش عناصر روایی: بازآفرینی داستان­ها، عنوان­بندی، افشای پیرنگ، تعلیق­ آفرینی، پردازش گفتگوهای داستانی، استقلال داستان­ها، پیوستگی درونی پیرنگ­ها، تأخیر روایی، تناسب موضوع و درونمایه، بیان نتیجه­ گیری، پایان­بندی داستان­ها. دستۀ سوم؛ پیوندهای درونی چون: واژگان کلیدی، جملات کلیدی، ابیات کلیدی، چهارچوب بندی متن، و پیوندهای داستان و متن.  همگی این نشانه­ ها نیازمند پیش­اندیشی هستند و  بر آگاهانه، اندیشیده، هشیارانه و هدفمند سرودن مثنوی گواهی­ می­دهند.  }, keywords_fa = {آگاهانه سرودن,پیش‌اندیشی,جریان سیال ذهن,جلال‌الدین محمد بلخی,مثنوی معنوی}, url = {https://jls.um.ac.ir/article_35728.html}, eprint = {https://jls.um.ac.ir/article_35728_c4d1949da9a97c8915c85faa2f85e57f.pdf} }