مجله مطالعات داستانی
پیاپی 2 (زمستان 1391)

A great number of contemporary Iranian novelists, significantly the women, have written their stories under the influence of contemporary Western writers. The reflection of their moods, pains, and limitations can be clearly seen in their story and novel collections. In this paper, the authors dealing with narrative techniques of Grard Genette on the one hand, and Sara Salar’s Ehtemalan Gom Shodeham (I May Have Been Lost) on the other hand, examine some of the most important of these techniques. Particularly, the technique of time in the narrative will be discussed. Genette presents his theory of the narrative time on the basis of order, continuity and frequency. Since the concept of narrative time is one of the significant components in Salar’s story, this technique will be investigated and confirmed in its statements. In addition, it is shown that the anachrony factor, especially in the analepsis type, is the most frequent one that makes the narrative time be slow.

The publication of Yeki bud, Yeki Nabud (Once upon a Time) in 1300 H.SH. introduced Jamalzadeh as the founder of Persian short story and many writers began to follow his style. Imitating Jamalzadeh, Rasul Parvizi has based his works on simple and satiristic writing, and thereby has criticized social issues like love, injustice, cruelty, immorality, and superstitions as the themes of his stories. Realism and satire are the two apparent features of his works. In this study, while introducing the features of realism, we indicate how these features are used in two stories: Jamalzadeh’s Dousti-ye Khaleh Kherseh (The Friendship of False Friends) and Parvizi’s Zarsafar. Furthermore, the rate of Parvizi’s imitation of Jamalzadeh’s works is considered. The results indicate that Parvizi is not a pure imitator of Jamalzadeh and his stories are not as mature and significant as jamalzadeh’s; they are mostly memory telling or an incomplete plan in some special geographical along with satirical language.

With the spread of modern story writing and changes in the language and style of writing, and also by the emergence of new themes in the field of narrative literature, stories and novels hosted folklore (popular culture). As a result researchers and writers became interested in folklore. One of the issues dealt with is the effect of popular culture, including dialects and local customs, idioms and proverbs, on narratives. By inspiring the life of ordinary people and dealing with their concerns and problems, modern fiction has largely gone under the influence of popular culture. Jalal Aleh-Ahmad used these elements and took a long step to bring them back to life. He is a writer with special vigilance who used the elements of popular culture in some of his stories and charactersization. In stories such as Nefrin-e Zamin (The Curse of the Land), Ziyarat (The Pilgrimage), Taboot (The Coffin), Nun Va Al-Galam (Bread and Pen), Samanou-pazan (Making Samanu), Ay Lams-e Saba,(You Impious), Modire Madrese (The Principal), Sangi bar Gouri (A Rock on a Grave) and Algomark and Alma‘ kous, he has frequently used the elements of folklore. In allegorical and realistic stories, Aleh-Ahmed tends to pay attention to social and political problems of Iran and the Iranians. Paying attention to these kind of issues led him to choose most of his characters from ordinary people. Regarding the issues in question and the spread and importance of Persian narrative literature, this study tries to consider and survey the reflection of popular culture in Aleh-Ahamd’s works.

Temporal Structure is a theory about the formation of the story structure with regard to the time frame. The cause and effect relations between the events in Bozorg Alavi’s novel, Her Eyes, are made by means of time. The disturbance of the conventional time sequences has caused this novel to start from the middle; frequent flash backs to the past in Farangis’s memories have made a non-linear, circular time frame in the novel. Every event is like a circle that begins from one point (the present time and physical environment; Farangis’s room) and returns to the starting point (the preset time) right after narrating an advanture (retuning to the past). So, Alavi is not complying with the conventions of story time structure. This paper aims at analyzing the temporal structure (the non-linear time frame) in Her Eyes. Moreover, it is an attempt to map the temporal structure theory onto the novel as a genre.

Availing from story and narration for expressing deep mystic concepts has been considered by poets and writers of our country for a long time. Sometimes we face stories that have similar and various narrations due to their high structure and conceptual capacity. Ayaz va Gohar Shekastan (Ayaz and Breaking of Gem) is one of these stories which has been narrated by Attar, Shams-e-Tabrizi, Mowlavi and Soltan Valad. In this research the author tries to examine these various narrations by applying comparative attitude and descriptive and analytical method. Also, the narrative structure of the narrations are expressed, and their similarities and differences regarding the story elements such as characterization, setting, dialogue and theme are explained. The results of the comparison reveal that in Mowlavi’s narration story actions are more than the others, and the setting is present. Moreover, the characterization element in Mathnavi-ye Ma‘navi is more impressive than the others. Besides, Mowlavi and Shams-e-Tabrizi have tried to express their narration as a show by using suitable dialogues regarding characters’ situations.

Death and the anxiety caused by death make one of the most frequent matters which has involved humans’ soul and spirit in the course of history and thinkers have tried to deal with the causes of this anxiety regarding different approaches. In this article, being aware of the variant viewpoints of the thinkers, with respect to metaphysical phenomena like God and the Life after the death in different conditions dominating each era, the author examines this kind of anxiety, which is referred to as the anxiety resulting from destiney and death. This is done by aviling from two symbolic stories of Mawlavi and Dostoyevsky, i.e. Astar and Jalinus and Ivan and The Crocodile, which represent two different ideologies. While presenting the ideological differences dominating the production of the stories and their final results, the author compares the actions of main characters as well as the thoughts dominating the stories. The findings reveal that although they are similar in structure, and sometimes in theme, they are different from the viewpoint of discoursal-philosophical space; Mawlavi’s story is about rejecting the love for the world while Dostoyevsky’s rejects thinking about death and the meaninglessness of life.