A Study of Fictional Elements in the Animal-Oriented Anecdotes of Molavi's Mathnavi

Due to its narrative structure، Mathnavi has always been at the center of attention. Probably the characterizations based on fictional elements have turned this unique mystical work to a literary masterpiece، since the role-playing of non-human phenomena، especially animal characters، as well as decoding them and identifying their positive or negative functions greatly help us in understanding the complicated concepts of Mathnavi. Therefore، the stories of Mathnavi not only serve as a means for explaining the abstract، mystical، or ethical concepts، but also، due to their particular structure based on fictional elements، contain the ‘epistemological’، ‘anthropological’، and ‘anthological’ domains. The present paper aims to study the Mathnavi stories which are based on animal characters in terms of the standards used by the contemporary literary critics. The results showed that Molavi، in spite of his long temporal distance with us، was committed to using many fictional elements such as characterization، plot، type of story، dialogue، theme and type of narration.