A Comparative Study of William Morris’ "The Man Who Never Laughed Again" and Nizami Ganjavi’s “The Black Dome” in Haft Peykar based on Julia Kristeva’s theory of Intertextuality

The Oriental culture, literature and myths have long been the focus of Orientalists and Western scholars. William Morris is a British poet who was interested in Persian poetry and literature. He was familiar with Persian culture and literature, and wrote “The Man Who Never Laughed Again” based on “The Black Dome” in Nizami Ganjavi’s Haft Peykar. He imitated the character, atmosphere of the story, the symbols, the colors, the costumes and other elements of the story from Haft Peykar. Haft Peykar or Haft Gonbad is one of Nizami’s lyrical poems that symbolically portrays the spiritual transformation of King Bahram of Iran. Bahram proposed to marry seven princesses from seven countries, and made them the first ladies of the seven palaces. He was the guest of one of them every night to spend time and rejoice when he heard stories. Finally, at the end of the week, when he was the guest of the Black Dome, Dorsati the Persian princess told a story about the Persian culture that influenced Bahram. This research, like other researches, has examined the impact of Nizami’s “The Black Dome” on William Morris’ work through the analysis of the content of the texts. It is based on library studies. In conclusion, this research is going to prove that William Morris’ work in terms of structure and content, like a refreshing seedling, is originated under the shade of the thick tree of Haft Peykar, then it has borne fruit in European literature.