History of mentality and Shahnameh Studies

History of mentality is a novel method in Historiography which attempts to recognize the public mentality and discover the spirit of time to strive at what is known as “total history”.  Linguistic, literary, and artistic sources are filled with information among which one can identify nations’ attitudes. Hence, literary masterpieces with their widespread influence over nations’ mentality gain particular interest here.  The singular role of Shahnameh in the history of Persian mentality and formation of persistent national identity amid the Persian literary works and the related arts is worthy of attention.  Inspection of historical and cultural sources is a subject mostly overlooked in the common literary and historical researches, therefore, this article pays attention to this aspect, and by using descriptive analytic method aims to explain and analyze the instances of impact of Shahnameh over Persian mentality.  The outcome of research indicates that the theory of history of mentality can pave the way for recognition and presentation of Persian thought patterns.