Realism from a Literary School to Societal Reflection in Literature Pathology of Realism Research in Persian Literary Papers

The present study aimed to analyze the fundamental shortcomings of the papers written on the subject of realism in the Persian literature. To do so, first the number of such papers published in the national academic journals were determined. Then, the findings of such papers were compared against the realistic fundamentals and principles and the opinions of realists. The papers under study were divided under three categories: the first category consisted of those papers that studied realism and its features theoretically. The second category was related to those papers that investigated the realistic fundamentals and principles in a Persian literary work or in a writer’s literary collection. The third category referred to those papers that investigated the realistic features in the literary works comparatively. The results of the study revealed that due to the lack of deep investigation into the theoretical and philosophical foundations of realism, some fundamental mistakes have appeared in the papers, including the reduction of realism to story elements, the societal reflection in literary works, and the lack of differentiation between the different meanings of realism (as a school, a story writing style, etc.).