Hypertextuality in the Selected Anecdotes of Asrar Nama; An Analysis

Examining the interaction between texts is one of the ways to know texts accurately; hypertextuality is an approach to text reading that shows relationships between texts in a systematic way. Most of the anecdotes of Asrar Nama (composed by Attār of Nishapur) have their roots in previous works, but they have been changed and reproduced in this book very thoughtfully and purposefully. By using analytical-comparative method and based on Gérard Genette’s theory of hypertextuality, the present article attempts to investigate the relationship between the Asrar Nama and its subtexts. The findings of the research show that Attar uses subtexts in the form of explicit and implicit intertextual relationship in order to validate the narrative and confirm the content. The most type of hypertextual relationship between Asrar Nama and its subtexts is trigonomy or homogeneity in a quantitative transformation and pragmatic transformation methods. Processes such as transformation of motivation, transformation of value, qualitative transformation, amplification, expansion, cutting and summarizing the text lead to change the discourse of the stories, to highlight the content, to add fictional elements, to turn the text from a report mode into a narrative mode, to devalue or value the characters of the anecdotes and to adjust the goals in the Attār's narration. Hypertextuality in Asrar Nama is interpretive; it has played an effective role in explaining Attar's mystical views, expanding the themes, and symbolizing the anecdotes that are monosemantically and superficially narrated in the sources of Asrar Nama.