A Study of the Sayed Ashraf-Al-Din Gilani (Nasim-e-Shomal) Poems in the Light of Frankfurt School and Constitutional (Mashrooteh) Movement Hamid Khanian Department of Persian Language and Literature, Islamic Azad University, Ilam Branch, Iran Abstract—Frankfurt school started its activity in 1928 by establishing an institute for social research. Some of the theorists of this school are Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno, Fromm and Benjamin Habermas. This school considered most of the thoughts and ideas of classical Marxism as incorrect and criticized them. Basically, in this school criticizing the poor condition of the school community has been an important component and art is considered as a medium to make the people aware of these problems. In Iran with the advent of the constitutional (Mashrooteh) movement, literature and art entered a new phase and the poets were committed to criticizing the disorders and social, political and cultural problems. They believed that the art with no benefit for the people’s welfare and improvement of social and political conditions, and not used as a weapon against tyrants, is a worthless art. Thus, the authors in this study made an attempt to investigate these critical ideas in the works of one of the most prominent poets and critics of constitutional (Mashrooteh) era, sayed Ashraf-Al-Din Gilani known as Nasim-e-Shomal, and to determine the critical components in the poems of this renowned Iranian poet. Index Terms—Frankfurt school, criticism, Mashrooteh, Sayed Ashraf-Al-Din Gilani (Nsim-e-Shomal) I. INTRODUCTION Frankfurt school was founded in 1928 and is associated with the institute for social research. It was transferred to New York in 1933 after Hitler exiled its members, but it was started again in Frankfurt in 1950. Marcuse, Horkheimer, Fromm and Benjamin are the theorists of this school and in the contemporary era Habermas and Peter Burger are the ones who have put the critical tradition of Frankfurt on the agenda (Taslimi, 2009, p. 151). In fact, there are four specific periods in the history of Frankfurt school: 1. The first period was 1923-1932, when the research carried out in the institute were completely diverse and were not a raw interpretation of Marxist ideology to be instilled in the critical theory. In this era, the founder of the institute, Karl Grunberg, was a social and economic historian who had a close association with the thoughts of Austrian Marxists and a noticeable part of the institute’s works had mainly experimental nature. 2. The second era included the exile period in North America from 1933 to 1950 during which contrasting views (Hegelian critical theory) were firmly instilled as the principles of the institute’s activities. The manager of the institut e was Horkheimer in this era. In the policy of the institute, he devoted the philosophy of the superior map to himself instead of history and economy. This orientation was strengthened by the membership of Marcuse in 1922 and Adorno in 1938 following the little cooperation they had in 1931. 3. In the third era from the return of the institute to the Frankfurt school in 1950, the main viewpoints of critical theory were vividly formulated in a number of the works by member authors and scholars, leaving principal effects on their social views over time. Its scope of its influence was advanced later, especially after 1956 and the rise of the new left movement all over the Europe and the United States in which some of the members had remained. The great political and ideological effect of radical student movements reached its crescendo. Marcuse was introduced as the main representative of the Marxist critical theory. The impact of Frankfurt school gradually declined from early 1970, the period considered as the fourth period in the history of Frankfurt school. In fact, Frankfurt school came to an end with the death of Adorno in 1969 and Horkheimer in 1973. At last, Frankfurt school distanced from Marxism, which was once its source of inspiration (Monigh, et al., 2007). Frankfurt school has considered many predictions and ideas of classical Marxism as incorrect. They believed the capitalist society would downfall due to excessive exploitation of the working class and the deep social class contradictions. But, Marcuse states that the ruling class prevented the advent of socialism and its downfall by enhancing the working class welfare (Marcuse, 1983, p. 13-14). The main ideas of the Frankfurt school are manifested in the critical theory. From this point of view, an idea should be committed and revealing because a kind of wide domination of vice on virtue and self-alienation on freedom is created (Marcuse, 1983). Critical theory is a kind of non-criminalist view which is mainly concerned with entire ISSN 1798-4769 Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 5, No. 6, pp. 1399-1405, November 2014 © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/jltr.5.6.1399-1405 © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER