Analyzing the function of " Fictional Allegory" in the Plot of Short Stories

Allegory is one of the rhetorical devices that has attracted a great deal of attention from critics for its semantic functions. Among different types of allegory, fictional allegory which has a narrative structure has had a wide application in classical and contemporary Persian literature. Like poetry, contemporary story has benefited from semantic functions of allegory in many cases. Studying the fictional allegories used in modern short stories, illustrates that some authors have used this device not just for its semantic function, but also it in the structural part of the story. Aiming at studying this function, in this research three Persian short stories (“Mehdi”, “Amphibians”, “Fiction and Grief”) are analyzed based on the ideas of Brian Richardson about the structural effect of rhetorical devices in modern stories to show that in addition to its semantic function, fictional allegory has a role in the plot structure of modern short stories .