The History of Jahāngushāy-i Juwaynī: The Narrator of the Debate over the Hidden Ideologies of a Text/Culture

If we admit that culture is a kind of text, we must inevitably accept that “The History of Jahāngushā” is a text that is the point of contact of different ideologies, each of which forms a part of Iranian identity and culture. Contrary to formalist approaches, an attempt has been made here to revisit the text based on those approaches of literary criticism that read the text in a dialectical and interactive connection with the material contexts of its production. Therefore, first, the ideologies in the text are introduced and analyzed, and after determining their role in shaping the ideological system of the History of Jahāngushā, their discourse contradictions are revealed, and finally, the impact of these ideologies on the text is discussed. Various factors such as historical context, social, cultural, and ideological institutions have been influential in the composition of this text and its linguistic form. It seems that more than the linguistic and expressive complexities, it is the discoursal, ideological, and cultural contradictions that have caused confusion and complexity of the text. Analyzing and retrieving the ideological currents of the text not only explains the reasons for its different readings but also helps the reader to reach a new and different judgment of the literary, historical, and cultural aspects of the text.