The Semantics of the Concept of Modernity in the Dramatic Literature of Mirza Fethali Akhundzadeh Based on the Theory of “the Conceptual History” by Reinhart Koselleck

History of the concept is a field that explores the changes and metamorphoses that fundamental concepts and semantics undergo through time, and then recounts the history using the lens of said concepts. Fundamental concepts are widespread ideas that create change in a society, and also depict the historical chronicles of a society. According to Reinhart Koselleck, history of the concept is a hybrid subject, utilizing social history, historical linguistics, and historical semantics and bases its theoretical framework and methodology on critical history, principle of time and simultaneity, semantics, and convergence of concept and history. Accordingly, these concepts act as revealing forces of ideas, social and ideological structures; and since they have a historical essence and occur in history, they can have different meanings and functions in relation to the history of each country and nation.Using the history of meaning theorem, the concept of modernity, which has a foundational essence, is hereby studied in the context of dramatic literature; this concept has a foundational essence since upon entering Iran during the reign of Fath-ali Shah of the Qajar dynasty, it caused serious changes in the country’s political and social structures and brought forth new events which indicated the manner of occurrence and the meaning of modernity in Iran. To explain the meaning of this foundational concept at the beginning of the history of dramatic literature in Iran, the plays and works of Mirza Fathali Akhundzadeh will be analyzed and studied; First, the meaning and examples of modernity in his dramatic works are interpreted and defined according to the principle of diachronic, and then, according to the requirements of the history of the concept and the existence of different and similar definitions of modernity in the social field of Akhundzadeh’s time, modernity in Akhundzadeh’s dramatic literature will be studied using also the perspectives of Amir Kabir, Naser al-Din Shah, Malkam Khan and Haj Sayah based on the principle of simultaneity and ultimately, the semantics of the concept of modernity will be formulated based on the history of the concept theorem. The necessity of such research is that modernity as the existence of dramatic literature, was the main subject of Akhundzadeh’s plays, and therefore such a foundational concept should be known and studied for its meaning at the beginning of Iran’s dramatic literature history and for how it was represented in a part of Iran’s history, not following pre-determined dictionary definitions, but by integrating it into its proper context.