A Study of Personification as a Literary Figure in Poems of Fereydoon Moshiri and Nizar Qabbani

Abstract

Personification is one of the most beautiful figures of speech in poetry and it is via this power of imagination that the poet gives life and dynamicity to inanimate objects and by this mental and perceptual relationship with nature and surrounding world, he injects human spirit and characteristics to them and starts a dialogue with them and creates a new world. The authors of current article intend to assay the place of personification as a figure of speech in the poetries of two contemporary renowned poets from Iran and Syria, i.e. Fereydoon Moshiri and Nizar Qabbani, and compare their use of various types of personification from the perspective of metaphorical relation and non-relational metaphor and contents like human characteristics and states and personification, human body members and personification, addressing and abstract concepts, as well as animation of natural phenomena and objects in the poems of these two poets are comparatively assayed and analyzed. The results of our study show the existence of similarities in presentation of mental pictures and poetic syntheses and its notions in the poems of these two poets who have taken advantage of personification for expression of their own emotions and internal states. High frequency of the use of personification and avoidance of natural norms of speech are among the key features and novelty of the poetry of these two poets.