Miserliness as the Way of Being: A Semio-Semantic Analysis of Miserliness in Haji-Agha Written by Sadeq Hedayat

Haji-Agha, written by Sadeq Hedayat, tells the story of Haji-Abutorab who is known as a benefactor and philanthropist among his people, but is actually a sly and stingy man inside. His miserliness and materialism is not only a simple attribute but a horrid sickness. What makes the semio-semantic analysis of this feeling significant is the inter-mental or interactional aspects, what Landowski labels the contagious of this feeling. Thus, this study aims to follow figures like Greimas and Fontanill on the formation of human feeling, and analyzes miserliness through a semio-semantic perspective. The study aims to answer how miserliness as a model of individual feeling is an inter-mental one, and how Haji-Agha's miserliness changes from a personal feature to a social one. In this regard, first, the formation of emotion discourse in the story is analyzed, and then, the social aspect of miserliness is discussed. In the end, the concept of miserliness is discussed through the semio-semantic system of feelings.