Analysis of contradiction in recreating the epic mythic narrative of «Yousht e Fryan»

In the decades of 1320 and 1330 HJ, the heavy burden of defeat, agony of retracing the past, and feeling of anxiety for future events led Iranian intellectual authors to variety of escapes. The authors of this lost generation attempt to console their readers by seeking refuge to mythical narratives and allegorical stories. In this period, authors pay particular attention to myths because of their unfamiliarity and vagueness. In order to recreate character and boost the spirit of the repressed society myths are retold and reinvented. Ehsan Tabari is a contemporary Persian author whose musings in the field of philosophy and his preoccupations with political activities has cast a shadow over his literary creations hence his works are less analyzed in terms of literary theories. Philosophically speaking, he belongs to a realist movement. In his narrative works alongside showing reality he utilizes irony. The tendency towards irony is due to the harsh political climate in Pahlavi era and for this reason the manner of expression in his stories becomes allegorical. Whenever irony is injected into a literary work, one can anticipate the presence of contradiction and contradictory thoughts. Contradiction can be regarded as a device among the variety of insulting ironies which appear in many kinds of literary devices. The purpose of this article is to examine the manifestations of contradiction in the story of Yousht Fryan by Tabari. Yousht Fryan is a legendary tale which appears in Tabari’s book of Magic Journey. In this work, the author by defamiliarizing mythical concepts turns to contradiction. Since this story lends itself to different interpretations, after defining contradiction and its characteristics using the analytic method, the standpoint of this story from the perspective of literary theories such as structuralism, deconstruction, and also discourse logic is examined