The role of Irony in "Sheikh San’ān"

One of the main features of literary texts is its openness to hermeneutics and equivocality, which is the result of using figurative language or literal devices. One of these literary devices is irony, a kind of bilateral or sometimes multilateral statement, which best serves to surprise the reader.  In ironical utterance, there is some sort of ambiguity and contradiction in meaning which reinforce proliferation and paradoxicality. In other words, irony is a useful literary device for the writer or poet to show a reality behind apparent behavior and utterance of the characters to the intelligent reader. Irony as a literary device, irony is observed in the works of Attār and particularly in his well-known Manteq al-tayr [The Conference of the Birds]. By the use of irony, the writer succeeds in bestowing a mystic atmosphere to the story. Attār uses rhetoric in general and irony in particular both to express his complex mystic experiences and give a sense of fulfillment to the readers. The present research has endeavored to explore role of irony in the narrative development of “Sheikh San’ān” through a qualitative descriptive- analytical method.