Text Worlds of the Story of "Aghabala and Company Limited Child" by Sadegh Hedayat Based on Cognitive Poetics Approach

The aim of the present study was to investigate the worlds of text in the story "Aghabala and Company Limited Child” written by Sadegh Hedayat based on Werth’s (1999) Text Worlds Theory in cognitive poetics approach. This is a new approach that connects the wider world of literature to linguistics.

The data were collected by the library method from the above story, and analyzed using descriptive-analytic method. The authors seek to show how this approach can identify the underlying semantic layers of this story; and to what extent the writer has used this model to advance his story.

This work of Hedayat is one of his humorous works. In particular, Hedayat’s humor is a bitter one, and it is certainly not possible to claim exactly who the audience of his humor is. Also, he expresses his intentions and goals not explicitly, but in humor and by masterfully using the principles of humor.

The results showed that the theory of text worlds is used to identify the hidden semantic layers of the story and the writer's mind. The findings also showed that among the world-building elements, Hedayat has mostly used “simple past tense" among different tenses, the element of the "house" among different places, and the element of "narrative" among function-advancing propositions, as well as the "epistemic sub-world" among those three sub-worlds in this theory to influence his words in the minds and souls of the audience