Applications of Association in Creative Misreading of the Story of the Theurgic Dervish

Creative misreading is based on the idea of the presence of an inherited relationship amongst literary works; however, not a relationship based on alignment and congruency or continuation; rather, a new relationship involving a fundamental dialectic, a relationship between the recognizing the power of the past and the deviation from its domination. With the aim of getting out of the shadow of his or her literary parent, the literary child initiates a defensive move; a move whose direction and approach are not passive; rather, it will ultimately lead to artistic creation. The techniques of creative misreading can voluntarily (consciously) and involuntarily (unconsciously) help the succedent text to escape the anxiety of being affected. One of the factors affecting the creative misreading of literary works is the element of association. In the current paper, a story from Masnavi by Rumi has been chosen which was created by Rumi through combination of and extraction from two other stories. The timeless and placeless nature of Rumi’s story, the closeness between the point of view of the third person and the first person, the indefinite main character and utilizing interpretive narrator instead of descriptive narrator, associating the Fetyan Group due to the characterization of the poet, internal monologues, soliloquies of the poet, stream of consciousness, and prolixity of dialogues, among others, are some of the techniques used in the creation of the new story in line with creative misreading influenced by the association element. Therefore, after introducing and discussing the theory of creative misreading, understanding the element of association and its characteristics, the influence of association on story elements in order to avoid the influence tension from the two source stories is discussed in detail.