LITERARY CRITICISM
Year:2011 | Volume:3 | Issue:11-12|Papers Count:11

This article studies the mythological criticism and various critical discussions on this area. Myth is tied with different elements of literature. Drawing on the undeniable role of myth in oral literature and the active presence of the myths among the ordinary people, in this study we have considered both the written as well as oral literature.The links between myth and literature is especially evident in poetry, fiction, and folk tales. In particular, the study of archetypes which in a way reflect the human’s collective unconscious can be significant in mythological studies. Myth is related to a variety of literary genres and in fact it is regarded as a separate type of literary productions. Myths have also influenced literary schools while linguists are still fascinated by the role of mythology in language. Therefore, the study of myths can unveil inner side of oral and written literature.

Mythological criticism is an interdisciplinary approach and one of the main approach es of contemporary literary criticism that analyzes the literary text drawing on an anthropologic approach. Based on its application, this approach also contains a variety other approached such as archetypical and Jungian criticism.In this method, the critic studies the cultural elements in the history of civilization that have influenced unconsciously the literary creations and explicates a literary work or some of its motifs relating them into their prototypes or archetypal deep-structure, through an a nalytic-comparative and inductive method. Accordingly, this approach draws on the studies of history of civilization, religion, and anthropology, on the one hand, and on the other, on psychological theories - especially collective psychology - for the analysis of the literary texts. Due to the importance of this method for the disclosing of the unconscious and symbolic layers of the text, mythological or symbolic texts yields more easily to interpretation with this approach. This paper depicts the history, theoretical principles, importance, and the application of mythological criticism for the analysis of the literary texts.

This article studies the mythological and supernatural creatures in one of the well–known Persian tales, Salim Jav a heri. Accordingly, it begins by presenting some of the main theories about myths and legends. Considering that some scholars believe that mythological criticism is not applicable to the folkloric stories, the article then analyzes each of these theories in order to investigate the mutual relationships between myths and folklores. Furthermore, because of the limited application of the mythological criticism on the Persian oral literature, this study explicates the capacities of oral literature, as an appropriate ground for the application of mythological criticism. Finally, as a case study, a well-known Persian tale, Salim Jav a heri, is looked at from a mythological approach. The elements of this study are derived from the oral literature. This study can be a beginning point for later studies on the corpus of oral literature.

In many stories, two factors, i.e. force and deception, helps the progress of the narrative. In those folk tales that good and evil forces are competing to win the beloved, although supposedly the beloved acts in favor of the hero, in narrative infrastructure, with deception, she actually leads the opposition forces in a way that can benefit her. In such folk tales, central character of the story is not the brave hero, neither the vicious monsters; rather it is a beautiful girl who wishes to marry the worthiest hero and have child with him. In this way, despite her apparent physical weakness, the heroine guides the course of the events as she desires using a variety of trickeries such as surreptitious behaviors, feminine charms, magical elements, and even manipulation of the antihero.This paper, using critical opinions about the fundamental structures of the folktales, will study and compare forty Persian folk tales in order to reach at the discussed common infrastructure which indicates the intellectual concerns of the women in the patriarchal period. The women narrators or listeners, in fact, have incarnated their wildest dreams – dreams that in real life they were often deprived of – in the imaginary world of the folk tales. Due to these qualities of the ancient stories and romances, these tales are probably related to the mythological stories of the matriarchy period.

Oral folk tales and religious stories of each nation, through symbolism, carry some social and cultural elements of that nation so that they can support the persistence of the people’s national identity. The “Sofreh-ye Vahmaru” story belongs to people who live in Khoramshah region in Yazd and reflects the wishes, desires, and cultural traditions of this small group. In parallel to this story, there are some traditional rituals in the region such as votive tables. The hero of this tale is a prince charming who is under a spell and has been changed into a white snake. His spell breaks only when he gets married and swears his wife to secrecy and silence for seven years. This folk tale has strong symbolic layers in unity with traditional ancient legends in Persian culture and literature. This article studies the symbolic layers which are hidden deep in this story.

Even though the marriage rituals and ceremonies in Persian literature have been the subject of numerous studies so far, these studies were limited in their considerations of different aspects of the weddings and they were mostly limited to Ferdowsi’s Shahn a meh. This article focusing on Samak-e Ayyar studies nine different styles, themes, and types of marriages in this work. In Samak-e Ayyar, the hero or the prince often finds his love outside his kingdom and as a result has to travel to foreign lands.Normally, the prince faces a negative response from the beloved’s father and has to undergo different ordeals in order to win his love. In Samak-e Ayyar, it is often the beloved who initiates the relation. There are also some other elements about and around marriage, such as throwing bergamot (toranj) towards the mistress, falling in love in the battlefield, and the conditional-mediated and utopian love-union. The foundations of these elements and rituals can be looked at, on the one hand, from a social approach, and on the other, in opposition to the feminist literary theory, especially in terms of its absolute presentation.

One of the common methods for the categorization of different narration forms is the structural analysis of the works. The oral tales especially are more prone to such analyses. This article draws on a new perspective towards Propp’s theory about the morphology of the fairy tales and on Satu Apo’s “The Narrative World of Finnish Fairy Tales” in order to study the structural patterns of a number of fairy tales. It seems that these patterns are formed on the basis of the stable situation of the beginning of the tale and how the state of the affairs changes till the ending part. Accordingly, the structure of the fairy tales follows these two patterns: (1) the hero is in quest of an object; and (2) something has endangered the life the hero.

Myths and mythical narration have several valences of meaning and as a result their surface and deep-structures can evolve and transform based on the horizon of meaning in every text in each historical period. The narrations of Bibis stories have two structures: an initiation custom of marriage (pagosha) and a religious-based tradition. The myths in the stories of Bibis such as “Bibi Shahr-e Banoo” in Rey and “Bibi Shah Zeinab” in Yazdel region in Kashan, even though originally they may have had the deep-structure of “sacrificing the fairies; ” the recreations of the old narrations and also the form of restructured buildings in the Islamic period can be indicative of the religious experience and its relation to the holy time. Some of the signs of the religious experience and its closeness to the religious matter or at least its tendency towards it are “the quality of being mysterious, ” “feeling of awe, ” and “splendor” which eventually result in the realization of the descriptions of the holy matter. These signs are embodied in the details and structures of the narrations as well as related old constructions.

Hamzenameh is one of the famous epic works in Persian literature and Islamic culture. It is also one of the early examples of narrative performance. There are different written scripts of this work each belonging to a different historical period. These works differ in their details of the story because they were not originally rewritings of other scripts, but rather were written on the basis of the narrators' memories, their taste, and the audience. This story has great fame and popularity among Muslims. The narrators of Hamzenameh have used a lot of motives and themes for the strength of their narrations.As a result, various picaresque, amorous, marvelous and generosity motives can be find in a single story. In fact, the book owes its fame to these comprehensive sets of motives. Interestingly, some of the motives in Hamzenameh can be found in world literature, namely dragon-slaying, foretelling, invulnerability, blindness, eyesight retrieval, and inconsumable gifts.

'Dokhtar-e naranj va toranj' is one of the most famous Persian tales with many variations and editions and is registered internationally under the code no.408. This story contains some mythological motifs.The death and revival of a girl living inside the fruits is one of its motifs reminiscent of vegetation god. The role of horse, girl’s long hair, and her relationship with water are some other mythological evidences in the story. The prevalence of narratives in which a girl comes out of a sour orange, bergamot and pomegranate shows that these fruits have mythical roots and they used to have an important position in the popular beliefs in the past. In fact, they were used as symbols in some customs such as proposal and marriage ceremonies.Sour orange and bergamot were the symbols of happiness and fertility. Pomegranate also was the symbol of fertility and blessing. Moreover, it was associated with love and its myths.