A Critical Analysis of Women’s Role in Sindbad-Nameh

Literature is a mirror that reflects the culture, and fictional texts are an appropriate ground upon which these cultural reflections in a variety of fields, including issues related to female status could be examined. In this research, two anecdotes were selected from Sindbad-Nameh to analyze the female role. Although the text of Sinbad-Nameh has been produced in a historical misogynistic context, there are many examples of the female power in it. This paper, with a descriptive-analytical approach, studies the text based on Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis method, at three levels of description, interpretation and explanation, to analyze the mechanisms of the representations of the female power. As a result, it was concluded that the women in this work have an active and powerful presence and that their active role in shaping the anecdote process is evident. Also, despite the negative attitude towards women, the signs of their hidden power can be observed. In this work, Women use intangible means of power such as language, tact, intelligence and politics to achieve their goals and if the ways to gain the constructive and lofty goals are closed to them, that power is sometimes misused.