Document Type : Original Article

Author

• Alireza Asadi

Imam khomeini international university, Qazvin, Iran

Abstract

Many contemporary literary scholars agree that literature is fundamentally defined by its form. It is the form that distinguishes literary works from non-literary ones. Accordingly, literary criticism, the history of literary evolution, and aesthetic analysis are deeply rooted in the study of form. In traditional Persian poetry scholarship, despite numerous efforts to analyze individual formal elements or artistic structures, the concept of "form" as a foundational aspect of poetry has often been overlooked. This has led to critical gaps in literary studies in Iran and has hindered the scientific development of Persian poetic discourse.
This study, grounded in the theoretical framework of Polish aesthetician Władysław Tatarkiewicz, aims to trace the evolution of poetic form in Persian literature up to the modernist shift introduced by Nima Yushij. By applying Tatarkiewicz’s classification of artistic forms to the history of Persian poetry, this research reveals that the formal transformations in Persian verse align remarkably well with his stages of form development. The findings suggest that a formalist perspective can offer new insights into the aesthetic trajectory of Persian poetry.

Keywords

• poetic form
• aesthetics
• Tatarkiewicz
• Persian literature
• literary evolution