Detecting Exchange Patterns of Marriage in Iranian Folktales(Based on Claude Levi-Strauss Theories)

Every country’s folktales are powerful sources which reflect its social structures. In Iranian folktales, marriage is an essential motif, and in these marriages, there are significant sociological information. During his studies about structures of native societies, Claude Levi-Strauss, the father of structural anthropology, discovered that establishing social relations between small societies leads to formation of large communities, and these social relations comply with specific rules. One of these rules are the rules of exchange which as it happens have a great presence in marriage. In this essay, we aimed to find the hidden exchange relations in marriage and show the different types and aspects of exchanging in them by focusing on marriage in Iranian folktales. For this purpose, referring to a number of sources of folktales, including Sobhi Mohtadi, Samad Behrangi, Anjavi Shirazi and Mashdi Galin's folktales, we investigated more than a hundred folktales which included marriage. The results of this essay revealed that multiple exchange patterns lead to marriages and women in these folktales are being exchanged for different sort of material items and non-material affairs. Exchange of women in Iranian folktales mostly takes place in exchange of wealth, health, freedom, protection, knowledge, education, etc., and demonstrates that the exchanging rules of marriage are common and accepted matter in the minds and souls of narrators of these folktales