The Role of Architecture in the Hegemony of Urban Discourse over Rural Discourse in PersianPoetic Literature

Problem statement:

The current study suggests that the depictions and illustrations of classical Persian poetry are associated with the (dominance) or hegemony of urban discourse over rural discourse, in many city/village dichotomies. Previous research endeavors have primarily attributed human aspects to the causes of this hegemony. Since cities and villages do not just include human aspects, neglecting the relationship between physical aspects (especially architecture) and creating or establishing this hegemony is considered an important issue.

The present paper aims to understand how that architecture is used in poetic literature to depict urban-rural hegemony.

The theory of critical discourse analysis has been applied as the theoretical framework and the research method of this study. The initial data of this qualitative research is limited to classical Persian poetry. Furthermore, non-poetic texts, such as travelogues, the positions of architecture, rural planning, and geography scholars, have been used for additional discussions.

The findings confirm that language has emphasized and de-emphasizing architectural features to create and consolidate the hegemony of urban discourse over the rural in the illustrations of classical Persian poetry. The architectural characteristics of cities, such as having unique units (minarets, Adineh Mosque, etc.), the centrality of cities to villages, and the huge scale of urban spaces, are emphasized in this literature. Findings show that this emphasis is compatible with the physical structures of the cities and the intellectual structures dominating the periods before and after the arrival of Islam. Furthermore, the following characteristics have been ignored to de-emphasize the architectural characteristics of the village: contextualism; the integration of rural spaces with nature; suitable village situations for sightseeing; livelihood-oriented rural spaces; simplicity of construction solutions; historical background of rural architecture versus urban architecture; the diversity of the village-related dwellings, etc. Therefore, architectural features have literally become a tool to portray and symbolize the hegemony of urban discourse.