The Analysis of Keyumarth Myth in Shahnameh from the Perspective of Levi Strauss’ Mythological Structuralism

The myth of Keyumarth is one of the most important myths of Iranian culture enjoying a high research capacity in various aspects and qualities. Therefore, it requires systematic and consistent theory-based research and literal criticism. In the present research, an attempt has been made to analyze Keyumarth myth based on the theory of structuralist mythology from Levi Strauss. Since enough and even more traditional literary criticism-related studies have been conducted on books such as Shahmnameh, and systematic and modern critiques have not received enough attention, a theory-based research considering literary criticisms approaches richly needs to be carried out in this area. The present study followed a qualitative design making use of a plenty of literary and documentary studies; i.e., first, the narratives related to Keyumarth myth were extracted from various books and then they were classified. Then, mythological units were extracted from among the narratives, arranged in a dichotomous manner and finally analyzed. The results of the present study revealed that the structure of Keyumarth myth is based on three dichotomies: holy/ unholy dichotomy, power/ power decline dichotomy, and nature/ culture dichotomy.