A Structural-Mythical Study of “Homay-o-Humayoun” by Khajou Kermani

“Homay-o-Humayun” by Khajou Kermani is an 8th century AH collection of stories relating the demanding journey undertaken by Homay, the Syrian prince, to reach his beloved, Homayoun, the Chinese princes. Based on the model of Vladimir Prop, this study intends to find the characters of the story and their functions and also to investigate the mythological sub-structures within the structure of the story. Previous studies solely regard the narrative aspect of the story and do not deal with the mythological aspect. The structure of the poem consists of six characters and eleven functions. The story ends with the success of the hero. This story, in some ways, has a mythical structure which has been extracted using mythological sources. One can look for the origin of some of these patterns in Iranian myths, and some others can be traced back in the mythology of other nations. The basic structure of the story takes form on defamiliarization.