The Structure of Lyric Language in the Poetry of Kamal al-Din Isma'il

Abstract

Lyric language is a mode of poetic expression that focuses on the direct communication of emotions, feelings, and inner states, establishing an emotional connection with the audience through lexical, syntactic, musical, and rhetorical devices. The present study aims to analyze the structure of lyric language in the Divan of Kamal al-Din Isma'il of Isfahan, known as Khallāq al-Maʿānī (“Creator of Meanings”), a poet who lived during the transitional period from the Khorasani style to the Iraqi style and whose works constitute a significant link between these two major traditions of Persian poetry. The significance of this study lies in the fact that, despite Kamal al-Din’s central role in the development of Persian lyric poetry, no comprehensive and multi-layered analysis of the linguistic structure of his Divan has yet been undertaken. The principal research questions are as follows: (1) What are the lexical and syntactic characteristics of Kamal al-Din’s lyric language? (2) What functions do poetic images perform within the rhetorical structure of his poetry? (3) What role does poetic musicality play in reinforcing the lyric structure of his Divan? The findings indicate that the poet’s lexical structure draws extensively on emotional, symbolic, nature-oriented, and abstract vocabulary. His syntactic structure employs exclamatory and interrogative sentences, as well as repetitive and contrastive patterns, to create a powerful emotional atmosphere. The musical structure, through meter, rhyme, refrain, paronomasia, and rhymed prose, strengthens the poetic message, while the rhetorical structure, through simile, metaphor, metonymy, and hyperbole, generates multilayered poetic imagery. These findings highlight the position of Kamal al-Din Isma'il as a bridge between the Khorasani and Iraqi literary styles and confirm the applicability of the results for teaching stylistics and the analysis of Persian lyric poetry.