The morphology of Khwaju Kermani’s Gol and Nowruz in the lLight of Vladimir Propp’s method

 Vladimir Propp (1895-1970), the Russian scholar, analyzed a lot of the Russian folk tales and recognized common themes within. He broke down the stories into “morphemes” and documented 31 elements or narrative units that contained the structure of so many of the stories. Propp gave each element a symbol, thus allowing a story to be described by a series of those symbols. He broke up fairy tales into parts. Through these parts he could organize the tale into a series of sequences that took place within the Russian fairytale. Typically there is an initial situation, after which the tale usually takes the following thirty one functions. Propp concluded that all the characters could be set on into seven extensive character functions in the 100 tales he analyzed. This paper, explores “Gol and Nowruz” which is an adventurous and exciting tale of Persian literature; the tale is Nowruz’s quest to find his beloved “Gol”. For this purpose the paper, an introduction of morphology and “Gol and Nowruz” have been outlined then the tale has been analyzed in the light of Propp's patterns in order to determine to what extent this tale is in parallel with Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale. Considering the motion sequences in each of Propp’s the expansions, and comparing it with the interpretation of the tale, it is recognized that the sequence of functions are not in complete parallel. In the analysis of the tale, we come across with seven movements; a search begins, hero moves first to find his beloved (a), but before reaching to her, the second movement, type (H and M), the third movement (H), the fourth movement (H), the fifth movement (M), the sixth movement (H), and the seventh movement (M), occur. The hero solves the problems and moves from one stage to the next and finally achieves his purpose. It is revealed that the lines of the tale do not meet the Propp’s paterns and it is not in parallel with it completely, because, encountering the problems, the desires and motivations of the characters are different; and it is the most significant factor why there is a difference between the tale and Propp's pattern of movements. However it is significant that all extensions of Prop’s classifications can be traced in the tale.  Comparing the narrative line of the tale with Propp’s patterns we can find that the tale has the 28 functions, out of the 31 Propp's functions, in common with Propp's functions, and we can conclude that this tale is consistent with the patterns of Prop. Prop concludes that all the characters could be resolved into 7 broad character functions in the tales he analyzed and have done the the same here: The villain and The false hero (the Dragon of Roman Empire, Shebel Zangi, Farrukh Rooz with his army and the storm of magic). The dispatcher (Shervin), the helper and the donor (Mehran, Yagoot, Bakht Afrooz, the Old Priest), the princess or prize (Gol), the hero (Norooz). The paper explores the characters’ tendencies which can be interesting too.