Artistic functions of poetic elements in “The Khattak Chronicle”

Authors

  • Mikhail Pelevin St. Petersburg State University, 7–9, Universitetskaya nab., St. Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21638/11701/spbu13.2017.306

Abstract

The corpus of “The Khattaks’ Chronicle” (finished in 1724), the first original historiographical work in Pashto, contains over seventy poetical quotations in Pashto and Persian which perform literary functions as rhetorical tools. The article offers systematical analysis of the contents, contextual meaning, artistic tasks and ideological implications of these quotations classified according to their formal and thematic characteristics as ad hoc verses referring to historical realities, emphatic ornamentations of prose, wise sayings and advices, aphorisms and proverbs. The study proves that “The Khattaks’ Chronicle,” having its roots in the national Afghan folklore as well as in the Persian literary traditions, combines features of both learned and entertaining writings which pertain to documented historiography and chronicles, on the one hand, and to the genres of memoirs and diaries, on the other.

Keywords:

classical Pashto literature, tribal chronicles, functionality of text, criteria of narrative artistry, genres

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References

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Published

2017-09-20

How to Cite

Pelevin, M. (2017). Artistic functions of poetic elements in “The Khattak Chronicle”. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Asian and African Studies, 9(3), 295–306. https://doi.org/10.21638/11701/spbu13.2017.306

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 3 (2017)

Section

History and source studies

License

Articles of "Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Asian and African Studies" are open access distributed under the terms of the License Agreement with Saint Petersburg State University, which permits to the authors unrestricted distribution and self-archiving free of charge.