A morphological study of "Bizhan and Manizhe" Story of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh based on Vladimir Propp's Theory

Currently, we can hardly find any criticism that has not paid any attention to structural functionalism. Contemporary literary criticism leads to structuralism inspired by de Saussure's linguistic theory. Structural analysis, especially, of narrative works is one of the most extraordinary achievements of contemporary literary criticism. In the stories, fairy tales and epic realm, Vladimir Propp's method is the best for structural stratification and analysis. His method is based on tales stratification and symbolic analysis of each stratum. Vladimir Propp used structural linguistic analysis for narrative analyzing. Propp, having studied one hundred narratives with similar composition, uncovered the structure of "main narrative" and by analyzing one hundred stories of Russian stories concluded that there were thirty one genres. He believed the method could be applied to other folk tales and even novels. Propp's method has been used by other scholars and sometimes was criticized too. Although Propp's system has its own defects, it has provided a proper starting point for other theorists and has influenced subsequent theorists. This article follows Propp's model and method and intends to stratify and analyze "Bizhan and Manizhe” Story, one of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh stories, The aim of this article is to probe Propp's model in this story.