The Assessment of Defamiliarization in Forough Farrokhzad’s Poetry

Abstract

Defamiliarization is a literary device which has been coined by Shkolvsky and its aim is to move readers to see familiar things in an unfamiliar way. Shkolvsky argues that defamiliarization creates a ‘vision’ of the object instead of serving as a means for knowing it, and it is exactly what Forough Farrokhzad (1935-1967), the Iranian modern poet,  applies in her poems and what the authors of this study intend to demonstrate. Farrokhzad defamiliarizes her poetry by making familiar things seem new, by unearthing oppressive elements of familiar situations and relationships, and by subverting traditional approaches with familiar and domestic things. The current study proposes and investigates three categories of defamiliarization which are stylistic, syntactic and semantic. Some examples are also given to shed light on these classifications. The current study aims to demonstrate the ways that Forough Farrokhzad has applied to take advantage of three aforementioned methods of defamiliarization.