Folk literature, including oral stories and folk poetry, are open narratives that each narrator uses according to his or her own intent. This genre, however, for reasons such as its humiliating title, the simplicity of the images, the use of the language of the masses, and elitism Persian literature, has not received much attention. In the constitutional period, however, with the change of the paradigm, of course, it was considered for political purposes and appeared as a rival discourse against the thousand-year-old discourse of classical literature. Folk literature was a constantly neglected "other" voice that found an unexpected opportunity to be heard in the new discourse. One of the poets who used this capacity to advance his political and ideological goals is Ahmad Shamloo. After Nima and perhaps more than him, Shamloo is the most prominent poet who has brought the realm of poetry into the public area in various ways; without neglecting the noble aspect of poetry. This approach is of course the result of his theory of literature, which considers it a social duty and commitment to justice and awakening the masses of people and raising children against oppression and injustice; therefore, by using the special codes of the mass people and children's legends, whether in the form of folklore poetry based on folk tales and legends or slang words and even compiling an Ketab e Koocheh, he has attempted to consolidate this ideology. This study, with the approach of cultural studies, reflects on the two contradictory sides of his metaphorical use of language and folk poetry: 1. Deconstructing the elitist approach to literature through defamiliarization with folk poetry, 2. Shamloo's use of children's language and discourse in folk poetry, which implies the sameness of the mass and the child and the need to be guided and led by a saviour.
Research Background
Research related to this study falls into two separate categories: 1. politics in Shamloo’s poetry, that sometimes contradictory views have been raised, only two cases are mentioned: Kamalizadeh (2016) in the book Politics in Modern Poetry, has addressed the two poems examined in this article solely in terms of the poet’s position and his political message, and Qaragozlou (2017) in the book of Tarikh e Talkh, which, of course, seems to have another definition of political poetry; he considers Shamloo’s Qat’nameh as a social thought that is different from political poetry.
A few researchers have also exclusively studied his folklore poetry; such as Salajeqeh (2010) in which she has examined the components of “travel and search” in two other folklore poems by Shamloo; in this study, “Baroon” and “The Story of a Man Who Had No Lips” are examined.
Kafashi (2011) has examined two poems by Shamloo. As its title shows, the study has no research problem. Furthermore, the research method is not scientific. Bahrampour (2010) has also examined Shamloo's four poems, in the category of folkloric poems that are reinterpretations of popular literature, a reinterpretation that in fact creates a neo-fiction and focuses on the role of “human being”.
Other works that have paid attention to the political themes of Shamloo's poetry have not addressed how it is integrated with folk poetry, and in particular the role of ideology as a central signifier or determining element, which is the subject of this study.
Goals, questions, and assumptions
The aim of this investigation is to explain the role and function of ideology in the aesthetics of Shamloo's folkloric-children's poetry, which, by referring to the theory of cultural studies and semiotics, addresses the semantic capacity and implications of this type of poetry. It answers these questions:
1. Why did Shamloo write folkloric-children's poetry alongside his formal poetry?
2. What is the function of this type of poetry and what are the semantic implications of its form?
The article's assumption was that this type of poetry was written to promote leftist ideology, but cultural studies theory emphasizes the prominence of the role of mass culture and the deconstruction of elite culture in literature.
Conclusion
Shamloo believed that in order to understand the literature of a land, one must be familiar with the language and culture of the masses of the people, and he considered this to be the beginning of such understanding. Moreover, his populist approach, which was the result of his lived experience and meetings and gatherings with the masses of people from different ethnicities and minorities, was not without influence in his connection with the Tudeh Party, but after breaking away from the party, he also took advantage of this vast opportunity to spread socialist ideas. Although Shamloo used vernacular in all of his poems, both this general use and his folk poetry simultaneously have a political function from the perspective of language, aesthetics, and content: 1. Contrasting the uncultured language of the people against the noble and refined language of classical poetry, 2. Contrasting the non-literary language of the people against the polished language of the Romantic poetry of the 1950s and the language of the New Wave (Mowj e No) poets of the 1960s, 3. The use of children's language, form, and music in political folk poetry with ideological and idealistic goals that implicitly imply the ignorance of both and require the awakening of the poet as a savior, 4. Breaking the monopoly of poetry's audience from the elite to the masses and summoning new audiences for poetry, namely children, in order to create a generation to fight oppression.
