Various Roles of Heroes in the Persian Long Folktale of Joneid Nameh:An Analytic Study

Joneid Nameh, a prologue to the long tale of Abu Moslem Nameh, is a semi-epic, semi-lyric folkloric fiction which conveys the story of Seyyed Joneid. The story focuses on the fictional hero, Seyyed Joneid and his attempts at reaching his beloved, Fairy Rashideh, and converting the inhabitants of the fairy lands to Islam. Seyyed Joneid is supposedly the ancestor of Abu Moslem Khorasani. The hero of Joneid Nameh is a descendent of the Holy Prophet and his Household from one side, and those of the fairies from another side. Seyyed Joneid reflects features of characters like Rostam and Tahmures. Analyzing the structure of the story, the study tries to reveal various roles of the heroes who are of different natures: real, superhuman, mythical, and legendary. The result of this research then shows that creating these characters based on folktale, whether taken from Persian, non Persian, mythical, folkloric, and even epic aspects, the author creates the heroes whose imaginative features liberate them from the limitations of the real world. This way, the stylistic conventions of fictional heroes in Persian literature are revealed to be more developed and multidimensional making the heroes appear both stronger and freer than those in foreign literature.