The Influence of the Element of Mood in Creating Epic Content in “Haft Khan Esfandiyar” of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh

In the field of contemporary storytelling, recognizing the literary type of a work and its characteristics depends on assessing the constructive components of that story. One of the most important and influential of these components is the mood. Proper use of the mood is very important, especially in epic works. This is because the epic poet can convey the dominant atmosphere of the work to the reader. This study examines and identifies influential factors in mood and the creation of epic content in the story of “Haft Khan Esfandiyar” from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. Considering Ferdowsi’s masterfulness in composing the national epic of Iran, analyzing the stories of Shahnameh is necessary in understanding the features of this literary genre. In “Haft Khan Esfandiyar,” Ferdowsi has created a mood and content appropriate to the nature of epic by using the element of “defamiliarization” in the form of celestial forces, natural elements, and magical affairs. Moreover, the heroism of Esfandiyar in passing through “Haft Khan,” with the help of hyperbole, which is an inseparable part of epic, has highlighted the epic mood of the story. In this story, exaggeration sometimes directly and sometimes in the form of similes, metaphors, irony or in the context, effect the epic mood of the story, and the proper use of these devices by Ferdowsi, together with defamiliarization, plays a significant role in creating the epic content of “Haft Khan Esfandiyar.”