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Year:2023 | Volume:2 | Issue:4|Papers Count:6

The relationship between literature and society is interactive, affecting each other in a different  ways. One of the important functions of Persian literary texts is to preserve ancient rituals, tradition and beliefs. Thus, extracting, classifying, and interpreting them are essential  for understanding the past society and eliminating the ambiguities of Marzban-Nama.  Marzban-nama -which was recreated by Sa’d al-din Varavini in a technical prose- was originally written in a simple and uncomplicated style by Emir Marzban, the son-of-Rostam, in the fourth century. Given its Iranian origin, Marzban-Nama is an authentic text that contains diverse ancient  beliefs and rituals in it. Conducted in a descriptive-analytical method based on library sources, the current study seeks to analyze and critique six beliefs and rituals in Marzban-Nama, including the design on the wall, hyena hunting, the snake charmer, the fire-eating bird, the demon and glass, and the impact of the King’s intention on his subjects. To explicate and  analyze these beliefs and rituals, the present article benefited from various sources written in prose and verse. The findings of this points to the importance of Marzban-Nameh in preserving the ancient Iranian culture, its rituals, and beliefs in different fields.

The relationship between literature and history has been an object of inquiry for literary scholars. For them, they are not separate fields of inquiry, but intertwined ones. Their mutual intermingling results in the emergence of new historicism. As an approach in literary criticism, new historicism scrutinizes the way the novelist narrates historical events. The present study’s chief object is studying the struggle between the dominant discourse and the novelist’s subjective discourse. This article also attempts to read Moniro Ravanipour’s Gypsy by Fire in the light of new historicism. The novel revolves around a girl, Ayene, who witnesses political events from 1977 until 1981. In this novel, the author endeavors to present an alternative reading of this historical time based on her own ideological perspective. This study’s findings have revealed that the novelist seeks to confront the dominant discourse in her society through her own subjective discourse so that she can present an alternative historical narrative. In this work, the novelist depicts the historical events from 1977 until 1981 when people's Fedai guerrillas have been political actors in the political scene of Iran. In her treatment of people's Fedai guerrillas, the novelist has tried to be impartial. However, she reveals her narrative orientation after the victory of the Islamic revolution by challenging the Islamic Republic Party. In doing so, she presents a narrative that is based on her own subjective discourse.

The science of narratology was developed under the leadership of structuralists and its purpose is to identify things that are common to all narratives and only narratives. The word "narrative" was first proposed by Tzvetan Todorov and in the past decades it has become an important topic of discussion in almost all fields from fine arts and natural and social sciences to the study of communication and media. Coffeehouse painting is one of the most important folk arts in Iran, which flourished with the birth of the constitutional movement and the awakening of public opinion. One of the most important features of the coffee house painting is its narrative, which makes it a suitable example for narratology. On the other hand, shabihname, as a performing art of folklore, often has a relatively complex narrative form. Investigating how this complexity also makes Shabihname a suitable option for narratological investigation. According to what has been said, in the first step of this research, Genet's narratology was investigated as the main framework of the research, after that, coffee house painting and shabihname (both Iranian religious-ritual arts) were briefly introduced. In the end, the narration of Muslim children's story in two arts, coffee house painting and Shabihname, with the aim of evaluating how and the extent of influence and influence on each other, based on Genet's narratology, was compared. This research is descriptive-analytical and it uses document-library sources and reliable internet databases

Aware of identity’s significance in social relations, group interactions, and interdisciplinary research, the current research seeks to locate its concept and topic in the immigrants’ identity in Gosal (1995) by Sasan Ghahreman and My Name Is Leila (2010) by Bita Malakuti. The novels not only concentrate on the immigrants' social and individual challenges, but also articulate their similarities and differences given their specific conditions through selecting, streamlining, and differentiating the form of literary expression, lifestyle, personal standpoints, and events that are either linear or intertangled. Accordingly, by exploiting qualitative research and historical documents along with examining the immigrants’ self-scrutiny and identity indexes, the present research will elucidate and analyze the immigrants’ multiple identities such as hybrid identity, liminal identity, and disrupted/traumatized identity. Also, it will probe into the complexities of the immigration phenomenon to examine the relationship between immigration and the common criteria for movements across borders by paying attention to the realities of society and its link with the immigrants’ position. The goal of this identity-oriented study is to identify these novels’ potential not only for developing and representing human beings’ fundamental and existential elements but also for obviating the cultural and identity obstacles of overseas Iranians.

In analyzing a literary work, there are three common approaches. The first approach concentrates on words, the second one on meaning, and the last one on text and meaning. Based on the followers of the third approach, the text is closely related to the content and socio-historical and cultural phenomena. This group has two branches. Influenced by positivism, the first branch holds that all literary works are the unmediated reaction of phenomena. The followers of the second branch like Lukacs and Goldmann believe in the mediation of literary works with the phenomena. According to the followers of the second branch, a literary critic can discover the writer’s or intermediator’s general via the close reading of the meaningful structure of a literary work’s (small) units. Given the lack of literary study about Mohammed Tagh Bahar’s worldview, the current study seeks to fill this research gap. It attempts to examine Mohammed Taghi Bahar’s worldview by reading his collected poetry through content analysis as well as library research. More precisely, the present study attempts to answer these three questions by analyzing his poetry. Firstly, what are the poet’s social class and intellectual orientation? Secondly, what is the poet’s general worldview? And thirdly, how is his worldview crystalized in his collected poetry? In answering these questions, the current study could discover his poetry’s internal structure and the poet’s worldview. According to this study’s findings, Mohammed Taghi Bahar holds a neoclassical worldview. Hence, he is introverted, realist, melancholic, and obliged by the norms of classical literature and Islamic sharia. Almost all of Bahar’s poetry has simple poetic diction which is understandable for the general readership and lacks emotions as well as beautiful innovative imagery, and finally, it has a low frequency of spiritual rhetoric to reflect his worldview

Examining the extratextual relations in Persian novels is instrumental in a better understanding of the Iranian community. Due to the significance of national identity in today’s world, especially in contemporary Iran as well as due to the importance of religion in the Iranian community, the current article will study the relationship between religion and national identity in the three-volume novel: Shams and Toghra written by Mirza Bagher Khostravi, a novelist from the Constitutional period (1905-1911). The current study will draw on the oriented content analysis supported by the historical approach that is intermingled with national identity for its methodology. The analysis of the novel, which takes place in the seventh century, indicates that the religion-orientated perspective in the novel is more dominant than the national identity perspective. Nevertheless, in the religion-orientated perspective, one perceives a transnational perspective. In the novel, there is no contradiction between Islam and Iran. Instead, Iran and Islam are completely harmonious