Tradition and/or Modernity in Contemporary Iranian Short Fiction

This Study focuses on the relationship between tradition and modernity and their reciprocity and/or opposition in Iranian short fiction. For this purpose، six short stories have been selected from Beshno Az Vey Chon Hekayat Mikonad، a collection of short stories written by the most recent Iranian short fiction writers. These stories are as follows: Shahrnoush Parsipour''s «Bagh-e Farrokhleqa،» Mansour Koushan''s «Ayne-ye Sangi-e Madarbozorg،» Monirou Ravanipour''s «Kanizoo،» Amir Hassan Cheheltan''s «Asrar-e Marg-e Mirza Abul-Hassan Khan Hakim،» Asghar Abdollahi''s «Dar Posht-e An Meh،» and Jafar Modarresi Sadeghi''s «Shazdeh kouchulou.» Besides being recent، the mentioned stories best suit the approaches adopted for the analytical purposes of this study. The researcher seeks to examine the notions of tradition and modernity in these stories through feministic and deconstructionist criteria and prove that there is a negotiation between the two discourses in the selected material. In other words، the researcher is going to propose that some modern Iranian fiction is capable of representing both modernity and tradition rather than depreciating tradition in favor of modernity. It should be stressed that the researcher is not going to extend her conclusions to all contemporary Iranian short fiction.