Artistic and literary analysis of dream in the text and the painting of the tale “Tus sees Siavash in a dream” from the perspective of criticism of imagination devised by Gaston Bachelard

Gaston Bachelard, epistemologist, critic, philosopher, recognized as the prime structuralists of France had pioneered a new style of criticism based on the analysis and interpretation of artistic and literary images. Having based his criticism on the four elements, he believed a great deal in material imagination of the poet and its connection with the unconscious and phenomenological issues.  From his epistemological perspective, dream and poetic imagination through the four elements and in terms of mythological archetypes for obvious and obscure reasons find material manifestations.  In order to accept the literary role as well as invoking the feelings of the audience dreams appear with dual images. Analysis and interpretation of the material imagination and this duality respectively unravels the mystery of the text.  The tale of “Tus sees Siavash in a dream” is one of the ten narratives in shahnameh which was painted beautifully in Shah Tahmasb’s Shahnameh as a unique example of portraying dream world of the poet be materialized in the Persian painting.  This article is an attempt to represent the ancient connection between literature and art, painting in particular from the view point of material imagination using Bachelard’s ideas regarding poet’s imagination and its correspondence with the painting only to determine the standpoint of four elements in Ferdowsi’s imagination and how they found expression in terms of words and images, also to reveal to what extent they correspond with Bachelard’s criticism of imagination in poetry and painting.  According to the findings it can be said that the poet and the painter had made use of Bachelard’s material imagination and dialectic duality in creation of their works.