The Iranian, Cultural Imagology in the Mirror of Polak's Itinerary

The imagology is an attempt to better understand the judgment of others about ourselves and also to remove the layers of the text, and to understand facts or distortions, alterations, and the special perceptions that make it possible for the reader to understand the work of literature as the effect of the author's thoughts and perceptions. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the history of the images depicted by Edward Polak, a German travel writer, about the lifestyle, livelihood, customs, traditions, habits and social norms of Iranians of the Qajar era. The article is based on "text readability in the light of Imagology" in a descriptive way. The present study firstly presents its readings on Polak's narrative at two general levels, with a positive and negative look, then the examples of positive-looking text images in the form of the alignment and admiration of "me" from the geography of the "West" to the culture of " the other "(Iran) in the" East ". And secondly, considering the negative view based on the common pattern of Orientalism in the dimensions of the epistemological contradictions between the two identities of "me" and "the other" with regard to the position of the "West" and "East" in the dimensions of stereotyping and extension, magnifying the contrasts, and humiliating and insulting, has read the images.