Dialogue in Shahname

This study explores dialogue, a dominant style in both traditional and contemporary poetry / prose narrative literature, in Shahname as a classical masterpiece. To this end, initially, the concept and terminology of dialogue is scrutinized from the viewpoint of narration and its position and functions are discussed. Then, a reasonably large number of various dialogues are extracted from Shahname and examined in terms of their different features, including their in/directness and the partners. Finally, to analyze the role of this literary element, a subset of the distinguished dialogues basically concerned with champions are analyzed further for their content and topic and how they correspond with the conditions and setting factors. It is concluded that the literary element under study is basically represented in the heroic section and the dominant theme is boastfulness.