An Introduction to Systemic Attitude in Iranian Short Story

Common literary criticisms (both traditional and new criticism) study the works from their own point of view. Obviously, none of these criticisms, due to focusing on a limited and specific aspect of the work, do not provide comprehensive knowledge of the subject under study. For example, in some approaches of criticism, non-semantic factors, including the linguistic and aesthetic elements of the work are ignored, by looking deeply into the meaning; and text-centeredness and introspection in some other approaches, leaves parameters such as individual style and spiritual coordinates of the author and the cultural conditions of his era aside. Therefore, this research wants to provide a comprehensive approach to criticizing literary works by relying on the general theory of systems in which these limitations and shortcomings are minimized.The Iranian short story is the statistical community of this article, which has a high ability to be analyzed in the framework of this perspective among the literary genres. For this purpose, components have been extracted by the integration and adaptation of the comprehensive and central features of the short story with the general features of open systems, and the comprehensive methods of the short story have been analyzed based on these components in three main parts (systemic purposefulness and correlation of variables, systemic input and output and external interactions). In the necessary cases, examples of famous short stories, such as "Kabab e Ghaz", have been cited to explain the topics more precisely. In this review, the Iranian short story is considered an open system that has emerged from the interaction of internal formal and semantic elements, as system variables, the continuation of its life within the macro-system of the world depends on the level of its interactions with external systems and subsystems. In this view, the internal coherence and strength of the plot of each short story can be measured by the fluidity and multi-sidedness of the connection of variables on the central message circuit, which leads to the artistic formation of this message as an output of the literary system. Also, the dynamic balance, as a symbol of the permanence of this system, can be evaluated by examining its effects from environmental parameters and cultural background, and comparing these effects with the quality and quantity of its functions. In summary, the sum of these studies shows:1. Systemic criticism is a comprehensive approach that can entirely provide valuable data from the inherent characteristics of a literary work and external and internal factors affecting its creation, its rise and fall; 2. Systemic "integrative and wide-viewing" approach to literary works and types significantly covers the shortcomings of the old and new approaches in literary criticism; 3. In this attitude, the quality of meaning processing and its artistic return to the environment (as the main and final output of the system) and its social feedback are considered the most important criteria for the evaluation of the literary system. The state of processing and presentation of meaning is determined by the interaction of story elements and Components (=system performance); 4. The systematic study of Iranian short stories (in particular) proves Jamalzadeh's pioneering and his fundamental role in the prosperity of this literary genre, and the tendency of writers after him towards realism, social issues and popular culture, in a systematic scientific way; 5. Systemic criticism has the ability to provide the ground for conducting similar and even deeper and broader research on other types of narrative literature, including novels, and as a practical example be generalized and spread to various fields of literature.