Shāh-nāme Stories: from Independence to Solidarity (A Survey and Critique of Mythological and Historicist Views on the Narrative Structure Analysis of Shāh-nāme: Presenting a New Paradigm of Structure through Descriptive Criticism)

The stories of Ferdowsi’s, Shāh-nāme, despite seeming independence, create, in a coherent form, an organic whole. This narrative complexity has caused scholars for a long time, to attempt to discover links that connect the stories. There have been three viewpoints regarding the analysis of mythical or historical features of Shāh-nāme kings, and the interpretation of the longitudinal axis of its narratives: the triple division of Bertels and his followers, as Safa and Starikov; the historicist interpretation of critics such as Arthur Christensen, Mary Boyce, W. B. Henning and Khāleghi-e Motlagh, concerning the historical connections between stories; and the mythological interpretation of mythologists, such as Dümézil, Wikander, Mayrhofer, Sarkārāti and Mokhtāri, known to have based the solidarity of the longitudinal axis of the text on its systematic mythological deep-structure. This paper, after the examination and Critique of these theories, has attempted to give a new reading of raison d’être of the narrative solidarity of Shāh-nāme, based on descriptive criticism, and finally, divide the longitudinal axis of the stories into three major paradigms: The First being "The Mythical History" or "The Symbolic History of The Race of Man, and of Iran" (from Kayumarth to Keikhosrow); the Second being:"The History of the rise of Religion" or "the Religious History" (from Lohrāsp to Kayānid Bahman); and the Third: "the Narrative History" (from Achaemenid Bahman to the end). The aforementioned triple paradigm is a recurrent model, compatible with the cyclic nature of mythological continuity of time. Accordingly, it is possible to perceive the structural manifestations of these patterned models in Shāh-nāme’s narrative structure.