A Narratological Study of the Story of Siavash According to Van Leeuwen's Model of Social Actors

The Tragic story of Siavash is one the significant and remarkable stories in Firdausi’s Shahnameh. In this article, the authors will study this story through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis and based on Van Leeuwen’s network of Social Actors. This is to show how social interactors have been portrayed and see how the poem has reproduced and represented the discourses by linguistic parameters. To this end, dialogic couplets have been singled out, categorized and analyzed. The findings show that Firdausi has equally used latent and manifest parameters. Therefore, concealment of the narrators is as important as characterization and the development of the setting. Moreover, although the story of Siavash is an ancient narrative, it carries with itself Firdausi’s worldview and his emotional, ideological overtone and thus represents Iranian’s idealism, their zeal for identity and conflict between Good and Evil and the final triumph of the Good. The death of Siavash entails the vengeance of the Iranians, and the birth of his son, Keykhosrow, brings about the victory over Afrasiab.