نشریه روایت شناسی
سال دوم شماره 2 (پیاپی 4، پاییز و زمستان 1397)

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.

Sa'di's Golestan consists of short and independent texts (folktales, sayings, and verses). For the sake of analysis, it could be wondered how such a multi-textual writing could be investigated as a meaningful whole. Thus, the study aims to analyze the generation of meaning through investigating the different discursive structures and the core of meaning in the ultimate deep structure. To this aim, it is argued that the narrative structure (micro and macro) is responsible for the objectification of the abstract and logical units of meaning, expressed through sayings and supra-temporal and supra-spatial statements. The structure of the non-narrative parts (sayings) is substitutional and abstract, while the structure of the narrative parts is collocational and concrete. The overlapping of the semantic units of these two levels shows a semi-symbolic and binary shift from the "depletion condition" to the "Golestan condition". Therefore, Golestan is a value-laden condition, the semantic generation of which, in its discursive level, includes all of the previous semantic levels.

The narrative of Cinderella has been much investigated; however, it has not been analyzed from a narrative perspective based on the intelligent, sensory, and emotion discourse systems. This study aims to analyze the discursive system of Cinderella written by Charles Perrault based on the semio-semantic narrative approach. The results suggest that the value-base context of this narrative is neither thoroughly prescriptive, nor sensory and tensional, but that the value-base challenges occur through the interaction among such systems and the shift in understanding, which ultimately results in a hyper-iconic system. This study aims to investigate the interaction of the agent-based, tension-based, and state-based discursive systems in Cinderella, and figure out the impact of such an interaction on the emergence of the value from a semio-semantic perspective to understand the process of generating meaning and explain the hyper-iconic system due to the role of the shoe and its temporary substitution for Cinderella.

Bal'ami's history and Bayhaqi's history are among the masterpieces of the early histography and examples of smooth and intermediate texts of the Iranian prose literature. There have been several studies on the two pieces; however, few comparative studies of them could be found in the literature. This study, thus, aims to show the attitude, method, and features of histography in Bayhaqi, Tabari, and Bal'ami's histories focusing on the similarities and differences. The comparison of the two works can shed light on the quality and changing process of writing history. The results suggest that Bayhaqi's history tries to analyze and explain the events besides mere narration. His method stands among the analytic histography. But Bal'ami, in his translation, only chooses the reliable narratives from Tabari, because he believes that the repetition of reports on an event does not mean its validity. Bal'ami focuses on rationality as a criterion in such reports. Bal'ami and Bayhaqi consider history different from superstition and focus on the realities which are reported by credible narrators. Some of the other features of Bal'ami's histography is to analyze and find the causes through his narration, thus, this histography is different from that of the Tabari. Bayhaqi believes that the aim of history is to learn a lesson. Tabari, also, believes in learning from history and pursues religious goals in his history writing as well. But Bal'ami is influenced by political and nationalist motivations. People and society play a more dominant role in Tabari's (and Bal'ami) histories in comparison with Bayhaqi's.

Playing Chess with the Resurrection Machine is one of the eminent stories on the holy defense (Iran-Iraq war), which carries much structural and conceptual significance. Its literary significance among the novels in line with the discourse of war is due to its artistic use of myths to increase the interpretability and layers of meaning in the novel. In this novel, some of the constant issues of human beings such as good and bad, human suffering, and the control of destiny have been represented through recreating the myth of the fall of man, Jesus's death, and the fight between the hero and the dragon. It seems that some of the mythological symbols are embedded consciously and purposefully, while some others are involved subconsciously in the narrative. What brings all of the symbolic myths together is the human's fight against bad as opposed to being passive in the theme of the story. Moreover, the use of symbolic myths has increased the novel's interpretability. The interpretation of the characters regarding some of the symbolic myths has brought about a contrapuntal feature to the novel and has made a change in comparison with the previous routine war novels. The study borrows the method of critical mythology from Jung and Eliade in order to analyze and interpret characters, narratives, and other components of the myths represented in the novel, so that its explanatory and contrapuntal powers increase.

 Literature and mythology are closely interwoven; as contemporary Farsi poets have employed myths variously in their poems. Yet, in some, the social aspects of myths are more significant, an example of which is Shamlou who has used non-Iranian myths in his poems. His knowledge of the narrative on Jesus in the Christian Holy book has provided a different understanding in Farsi poetry. He has used the story of Jesus mythological. In this study, two poems, The Crucified Man and The Death of Nazareth, narrating the crucifixion of Jesus, are investigated. The change of structures and the narrative of myth are analyzed. It is also aimed to figure out how Shamlou has expressed the social and political issues through making changes in the myths. It is assumed that Shamlou has not only narrated the myth of Jesus, but also has employed it as a means of expressing other concepts. In this regard, each verse is compared and analyzed with the narration of Bible to find other layers of meaning. Shamlou has included political and philosophical meanings such as Sartre's existentialism in the myths through changes in the basis and structure of the myths. In other words, he has recreated the myths. It is found that the myth of Jesus is not realized in the poems as understood by the Christians for The Crucified Man expresses existentialism and The Death of Nazareth expresses the condition of the society and its intellectuals.

 The Moment of Honesty, written by Naval Sa'davi, one of the prominent Arab writers, and To Whom Should I Say Hello?, written by Simin Daneshvar, one of the great contemporary Persian writers, have employed narrative techniques to their aim. They have paid much attention to the element of time which makes the analysis of their work plausible through the recent theories of time, in particularly Gerard Genette's. Genette distinguishes the calendar time from the narrative time. In his theory of narrative time, he categorizes time to three aspects of order, continuity, and frequency. In this study, first, it is aimed to analyze Genette's theory through an analytic-inductive method. Then, the two stories are analyzed to understand that to what extent they have used the techniques of time in their narrative and how they differ on that. The results show that both female writers have employed the techniques of frequency and continuity. However, anachronism is more significant in Daneshvar's story, bearing more on flashback. Moreover, the extension of time and pauses in the narrative is due to the detail description of events which are not much related to the main events of the story.