The Story of Dash Akol: A Response to Intertextuality and the Horizon of Expectation

The short story of Dash Akol, is one of the most brilliant stories of Persian literature in the twentieth century, which has been mostly known by the name of its author, Sadeq Hedāyat. This story was first published in 1932 in a collection including 11 short stories. Years later, during 1970’s, a film was made based on this story which earned a highly distinguished position in the world of Iranian cinema. In the writer’s view, the story was written definitely with the support of other texts. Hedāyat has written an Iranian story; however, having complete mastery of other national literatures, especially French literature, he created this magnificent work and stepped towards a concept which is called today “intertextuality”. Since any literary text is created according to the reception of its audiences, a different reading of this story will help us to understand the genesis of another localized story at the level of Iranian reader’s horizon of expectation.