The Narrative Structure of Tales in Mathnavi of Mowlavi

The general pattern of narrative structure in Mathnavi’s tales is simple. To understand the falling and rising of the stories and also their stasis and duration, it is enough to distinguish the narrating from denarrating lines. Besides, realization of the frame-stories leads the reader to a deeper understanding of the distinction between narration and denarration. This article, while explaining the narrative pattern in Mathnavi, studies its two features of artificiality and recurrence. Artificiality denotes that the characters and actions strongly depend on the prescriptive conventions of author or omniscient narrator. The research concludes that the tales of Mathnavi show an interest to various intertexts and thus make the existence of recurrence tangible and natural.