Investigating the ways of characterizing in the “candle and butterfly” a fictional masnvi by Ahli e Shirazi

Characterization and its methods are very important and key topics in modern fiction literature, which, despite its novelty in the field of theoretical debates, has a long-standing presence in Persian verse and prose literature, and can be traced to various extents in ancient fiction works. It is an explanation. One of these interesting and exemplary literary works in terms of characterization is “candle and butterfly” a masnavi by Ahli e Shirazi. Ahli e Shirazi, the master poet of the 9th and early 10th centuries of Hijri, has replaced the human heroes in a love story with animals and elements of nature in this fictional masnawi with a stunning innovation and in a believable way. Ahli has made his story similar to the scene of a play where the characters taken from nature enter one by one and the poet introduces their characters and then leaves them to play their roles. Domestic artistry in this work is not only based on the method of simple and straightforward diagnosis, but it is a broad comparison between human life and the non-human world, which in addition to giving life to the characters themselves, for human belongings such as houses, tents, beds, servants, diseases, death, sigh, etc. also find believable matches in the non-human world.

In this article, a combination of descriptive and analytical methods is used. First, the description of the category of personality and its types and ways of characterizing are discussed, and then the character of the protagonists in the story of Ahli e Shirazi"s “candle and butterfly” and their ways of characterizing are analyzed.

The findings of this article indicate that although the topic of characterization and its methods is new, the master Iranian poets and writers have been aware of it in various ways, unconsciously or based on their progressive ideas, and have used them in their successful stories.

Despite its brevity, “candle and butterfly” is the scene of the presence of various personalities. Some of these characters are static, and some of them undergo diversity and change and are an example of dynamic characters. Also, their presence in the scene of the story is accompanied by appropriate arrangements and justifications that provide their humanity and the believability of their personalities and actions in a successful way.