Akhavan Sāles’ Ghesseh-ye Shahr-e Sangestan: An Archetypal Critical Approach

Archetypal literary criticism is a type of critical theory that interprets a literary text by focusing on myths and archetypes.
In this paper, based on archetypal literary criticism, the poem of Ghesseh-ye shahr-e sangestan (the tale of the petrified city), composed by Mahdi Akhavan Sāles (1928-1990), is interpreted and analyzed. For this purpose, the archetypes of hero, death and birth, Pire Dana (wise old man), shadow, self, and archetypal symbols such as tree, cave, mountain, valley, spring, well, and the number seven are considered as main concepts. In this poem, the central archetype is “the hero-savior”, and the other archetypes are explained with respect to the main one. Also, other subjects were entertained at two phases; first, the behavior, departure, and salavation of the hero and second, the movement, separation and return in the poem.