An Analysis of the Relationships between the Characters in Nezami's Leyli & Majnoon

The basic issue dealt with in this article is to analyze the relationship between the characters in Leyli & Majnoon by using Greimas’s Actant Theory. In Nezami’s narrative we found the six actants that Greimas has mentioned including giver, receiver, helper, subject, objective and opponent.The results of the study indicate that in this story, the giver is love, which is an abstract concept, not an objective character; the receiver is Leyli & Majnoon; the subject is first Majnoon, and then Leyli; the objective is the reunion of Leyli & Majnoon; the helper is Majnoon’s relatives; and the opponent, Leyli’s father and then Eb al-salaam.The study further shows that Greimas’s Theory can be used for the analysis of the relationships between the characters in Nezami’s Leyli & Majnoon. This pattern can be used to show the interaction of characters, their functions in creating a narrative work, and the existence of some of the characteristics that Greimas has mentioned for the folkloric stories, such as the hero being both the subject and the receiver. In this story, subject has been stated and depicted in such a way that it corresponds to both Leyli and Majnoon; at the same time, these two characters are the receivers, too.