The Structure of Narration in the Story of Zahak

This article considers structure and elements of narration in the story of Zahak one of the mythical stories in the Firdausi’s Shahname. Because of its special structure, the story of Zahak must be taken into consideration in the new literary critical points of view. Structural criticizer, Greimas, has analyzed this story. According to Greimas model, subject (Anti Hero) is Zahak, object is kingship, sender is devil and receiver is Zahak. Continuums of narrative are: contractual circle which is about a contract between sender and receiver; performance circle which consist of experiments and missions of subject; and disjunctive circle which is about the itinerary from unbalanced and negative condition to positive one. So, the special functions of narration in the story are contract, experiment and judgment. In the narration of story, the model is: contract-violation-punishment. In the other words, subject (Zahak) violated the rules (prohibitions) and finally was punished.