Historical reconstruction and characterization style in salhaye abri: lukacsian reading

The present article aims to study historical reconstruction in Ali Ashraf Darvishian’s novel named Salhay-e Abri (Cloudy Years) as mediated by characterization. The question we raise is twofold: what totality does an examination of the life of the hero reconstruct and how does it reconstruct this totality? Historical novel is the abstract essence of the history that a society has gone through; a history that has been reconstructed through the events of ordinary people’s lives. It tries to keep alive important historical
currents, which account for the current state of society. Thus, the aim of historical novel is dealing with the everyday life of ordinary people rather than narrating history from the perspective of prominent historical figures. Characterization is one of the most important formal tools through which the author can reconstruct history. Accordingly, we have studied Salhay-e Abri to understand how characters have developed and how their personalities have been shaped. Within the framework of Lukacs’s explanation of
historical novel and his dialectical reading, characterized by constellation of realism, totality and type, we have explored characterization in the historical novel Salhay-e Abriin, considering the context of the events of the novel. It can be concluded that this novel has focused on the hardships of an authoritative modernization or the Pahlavi’s dependent capitalism as the core of narration by means of the account of the hero’s life.