The Relationship Between Interpretation and the Stories of Masnavi

One of the most important issues in narratologicalstudy of Masnavi is methods of reading and interpreting the allegories. The relationship between this subject and narration is best revealed when we attend to the relationship between interpretations and storylines, regardless of the content of those interpretations. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the methods by which Mawlawiinterpreted the allegories narrated in Masnavi. It can be said that presenting the interpretations on the syntagmatic axis is the most important property of Masnavi. To interpret these stories, Mawlawi reads these as separated storylines, then, presents an interpretation corresponding to each of them. Multiplicity of these storylines is the result of two factors: Multiplicity of characters and Multiplicity of sequences. In this process, the value of main storylines is equal to subsidiary ones. Therefore, sometimes, the motivation (initial interpretation) of telling an allegory is not proportionate to the final and medial ones. The validity of the storylines for presenting the interpretations is both a factor for polysemy of allegories of Masnavi, and a presenter of a narratological explanation for association in Masnavi.