A Comparative Study of the Aspects of Critical Realism between “Yiki Boud Yaki Nabud” of Muhammad Ali Jamalzadeh and “Kan Ma Kan” by Mikhail Naima

Yeki Boud Yeki Nabud and Kan Ma Kan are two short story collections written by Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh and Mikhaeil Noaima that procced to the social issues of Iran and Lebanon. In these two collections, the culmination of literary democracy and the author's clever and critical look of social issues are revealed. The coexistence of two authors in two more or less close societies, the social themes of both collections and the style and look at those themes, as well as the names of the two stories, strengthen the assumption of stylistic and thematic closeness of both collections. Jamalzadeh's life coincided with the Constitutional Revolution and he was considered a supporter of the Constitutional Government, Iran, like Lebanon, was lagging behind in various cultural and economic fields due to the tyranny and oppression of kings. In Lebanon also, national liberation movements, such as the constitutional movement in Iran, flared up, and the cry for freedom and independence from the Ottoman Empire rose. These movements had intensified as a result of cultural and intellectual awareness in some Arab societies. Under these circumstances, the two story collections of Jamalzadeh and Mikhail Naima were written so that they were the two initiatives in a new style in Persian and Arabic short stories on the one hand and provided a basis for criticizing the critical situation of the Iranian and Lebanese societies on the other hand. Based on the foregoing, we seek through the paper to study the manifestations of social realism and the methods of expressing it in a collection Yaki Boud Yaki Naboud`s Muhammad Ali Jamal Zadeh and Kan Ma Kan`s Mikhail Naima in the framework of the American School of Comparative Literature and based on the theory of similarities and differences in this school. Note that the main topic in the American School of Comparative Literature is the study of the similarities and differences between literary genres in order to better understand and examine the common cultural and literary separation through the fictional works of these two great writers in Persian and Arabic as these works are a product of human thought through the ages and times. In other words, the research aims to study these two collections of stories in the field of criticism of social issues and express their similarities and differences in this field, and then create a bridge between contemporary Iranian and Lebanese literature in the short story and finally answer the following questions:  What are the methods used in Yaki Boud Yaki Naboud  by Muhammad Ali Jamalzadeh, and Kan Ya Makan`s Mikhail Naima's criticism of society?  What are the similarities and differences between the authors' methods of critiquing society?  How did Muhammad Ali Jamalzadeh and Mikhail Naima use humor in their criticism of social issues?  According to what was said in the above, The descriptive and analytical method was used in this research, where it compared critical realism between a collection of  Yaki Boud Yaki Naboud  Muhammad Ali Jamal Ghazadeh and a collection`s Kan Ma Kan by Mikhail Naima in the framework of similarity theories in the American School of Comparative Literature. Their anecdotal texts discussed the similarities and differences between them, and finally we brought the results of the research. About the theoretical framework of the research, it can be said that, it is one of the most similar features between what was, Yki Boud Yaki Naboud , by Muhammad Ali Jamalzadeh, and Kan Ma Kan`s Mikhail Naima, their critical view of social and cultural issues, and on this basis they can be considered within the framework of the school of critical realism in literature, because Mikhail Naima clearly depicts this characteristic and we can see its features in his stories Short,  On the other hand, most critics and investigators considered the publication of Yaki Boud Yaki Naboud a literary event and the beginning of realist literature in Iran. As critical realism was a new form in the realist school, in which the writer deals with the issues and problems of society with criticism and analysis, refusing to accept reality and seeks through it to reach the direction in which he expresses his opinion, This critical vision appeared in literature with Maxim Gorky, the Russian writer and activist who founded the school of socialist realism embodied in the Marxist view of literature. Based on the aforementioned, the short stories of Muhammad Ali Jamalzadeh and Mikhail Naima were studied in this research based on the theories of the school of critical realism and its components, which indicate that realism is that which is concerned only with the problems of society, the life of the people, and the issues and problems of society in a critical form.  The results of the research showed that both writers strongly criticized social problems in their stories, and there are great similarities in their criticism of social issues, There are also differences between them in the way they deal with these issues. Both of them criticized the social problems prevalent at the time, such as suicide, betrayal, poverty, social stratification, the miserable status of women and other problems that spread in society, however, her criticism was taken more seriously by Naima than Jamal Ghazadeh's stories, while the ironic side of Jamal Ghazadeh's stories outperformed Na’meh's stories in this matter. One of the authors' main concerns in their two collections of stories was a severe and realistic criticism of the social situation, which came by relying on various expressive styles such as simple and colloquial prose, the use of proverbs and the Grotesque language. The two authors pursue their critical stories in the direction of realism, influenced by European writers to achieve their society-centered goals that can improve the status of society.