A comparative analysis of narratives about " Rostam" and " Goshtasb" in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (Based on the Interaction of Cyclic and Lnear Patterns of Time, in the Formation and Critical Study of the Narratives)

In Persian literature, Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh has been used as the resource of many researches and an interesting subject for many literary and non-literary scholars. The special multidisciplinary structure of this masterpiece and the diversity and the extent of its narratives provide an opportunity for different interpretations using methods like historicism, discourse analysis and narratology in contemporary research arena. Searching in historical origins, this article aims at studying the way of narrative building in narratives about Rostam and Goshtasb, and they interacted in epic. The use of cyclic pattern in codification and organization of historical narratives mainly leads to the formation of narratives with mythical and epical contents that limits and transubstantiate events and historical characters in the predetermined substructure patterns. As much as the historiography method under the influence of cyclic pattern of time leads to the ambiguity of historical origins of events and characters, identification, and repetition in this method of historiography, the linear transition of events with story-like narrating ploys, provides narratives about events with different historical and temporal origins that appear to be coherent since they are formed under the domination of cyclic perception of time, and they do not transfer the whole past. For this reason, and according to neo-historicism perspective, every historical narrative is a story about the past which is not equal to the past. After matching the dual patterns of time perception with epistemology schools of history, by using discourse and narratology approaches, this article displays how the cyclic and linear patterns influence the narratives related to Rostam and Goshtasb, and their permutations.