Developmental structuralism in Iranian realism: The interplay of agency and structure in contemporary Persian poetry and literature

“Literature is a mirror of all events, rituals, behaviors, efforts and ideas of a society, which is the current language and identity of a nation, and a society can be identified by examining the content and subject of its literature and understand the events of social behaviors and trace the evolution of social phenomena ” (Ruholami, 2000, p. 9). The relationship between literature and social reality is not one-sided. In other words, literature is not a mirror in which the present of a society or social situation is merely reflected. If that was the case, then there would be no distinction between literary texts and social reports or history books. Literature not only emerges from the heart of social reality, but can also have a negative effect on that reality and help it change. It can be said that the relationship between literature and society is a dialectical one; literature arises from social structures, but at the same time it questions and denies those structures.

With the rise of qualitative method in humanities research in recent decades, this method is mostly used in social sciences and humanities such as anthropology, educational sciences, literary studies, cultural studies and political science and is usually a combined research; that is, from a set of methods, techniques, and tools; it uses personal experience, introspection, biography, narrative, cultural products, and a variety of observational texts, historical texts, interactive, and visual texts, and encompasses a wide range of methods of interpretation and interpretive analysis. In fact, due to Richardson, qualitative research is an attempt to understand a phenomenon from different sides and angles and to engage in a process similar to the crystallization of the phenomenon under study (Raha Doost, 2004, p. 250). Since the field of literary research is wide and many of its problems are rooted in the various sciences, the literary researcher usually prefers to start his research activity with a question instead of hypothesizing and presenting a hypothesis or hypotheses after gathering information. Therefore, the place of hypothesis is floating in the design of literary research.Accordingly, how is the interaction and dialectical relationship between agency and structure in the evolution of Persian poetry and literature through the impact of contemporary Iranian socio-political structure forms the main question of this research. In order to answer to this question, this article according to Pierre Bourdieu's theory believes the prevalence of a realist approach in Persian literature provided a good platform for literary figures to establish such a "relationship" with the people and society by focusing on popular concerns and taking them into account during political events.

Events, customs, behaviors, ideas, and moral and social status are considered as an example of a nation's historical background or in other words, social, cultural, and political developments, can be considered as its spoken language. Many of these events can be found in the boundless sea of ​​literary masterpieces. “The literature of any nation represents the heart and soul of that nation and encompasses one of the political and cultural pillars and civilization of any nation” (Grace, 2002, p. 50). Also, since the language of literature in politics is in fact a transition from internal to external thought in a social system, “a society without poetry becomes dumb, and a society that becomes dumb goes into decline.” (Davari Ardakani, 2009, p. 56)The creation of literary works arises from certain social situations, and therefore literature cannot be properly understood unless its relation to the mentioned situation is first carefully analyzed. Reflecting society situations is known as one of the functions of literature. Poetry, as the most prominent creative product of the language system, inevitably strengthens the social contexts of language and enriches the special social functions of language by adding mental mobility. Poetry that enjoys a prominent social status reorganizes language as the only factor in the relations of existence and, in Heidegger's words, “turns language into the home of existence” (Heidegger, 2002, p. 214).Following the Iranians' familiarity with the concept of "national state", which was first introduced in Europe in the 19th century, the interest in this concept (nation-state) as an ideal in which the state is no longer the power and domination but the representation of the people, in Iranian intellectual circles increased. The political structure was such that up to that time, such a government had not been experienced in Iran and there was no such a thing as nation, but it had to be invented, and this heavy task of innovation could be fulfilled through literature. Although Persian literature, despite having a long history in Iran, addresses abstract issues on the one hand and not addresses the concerns of the people on the other hand, caused its presence felt less in the context of society. But since the literary environment could not escape the influence of the social environment resulting from the constitutional changes, the poems of Iranian poets and writers as a literary asset found a large number of customers and audiences through language expressing the realities of society in the linguistic market by establishing a logical "relationship" with social structure. It was after this reception, the writers of poetry realized the value of their possessions more and better, and according to a mechanical and not merely emotional "relationship", the process of composing poetry to the more hidden layers of society was intensified.

The result of this research indicates that by adopting a realistic approach leading to the establishment of a "relationship" between writers and poets (agency) and the text of society and the audience of their poems (structure), Iranian poetry came out of the abstract state and instead of covering up and reporting general issues, it showed the realities of the society, the needs and demands of the people, and in return, the people recognized the words of the writers as their loud voice.