Analysis of Rostam and Sohrāb in the Light of the Theories on Narrative

In contrast to traditional literary criticism which was in search of correct and incorrect, structuralism is an approach that tries to discover the linguistic structures and semantic components of the text. Narratology, as one of the horizons of structuralism, studies any narrative at the two levels of “Story” and “Discourse”. The present article takes advantage of the ideas in narratology to analyze the Rostam and Sohrāb. In this study, the examination of interrelated events, formation of crisis and the process of going beyond crisis, are performed by making use of the ideas of Tolan and Martin; the role of characters in text progress and their relation to narrative context is seen through the eyes of Greimas. Meanwhile, the article benefits from the “narrative perspective” of Fowler to assess the position of Ferdowsi as the narrator, his attitudes toward the characters and their influence on the narrative process.