Click subject name to see related articles.
Mahmoud Fazilat; Arad Gholami
Abstract
Since literature is the manifestation and reflection of the realities of human life and their aspirations, it is constantly influenced by history. Therefore, the roots of many literary stories and narratives can be found in historical events and narratives. In this research, we focus on four historical ...
Read More
Since literature is the manifestation and reflection of the realities of human life and their aspirations, it is constantly influenced by history. Therefore, the roots of many literary stories and narratives can be found in historical events and narratives. In this research, we focus on four historical and literary narratives that have a special type of deception as their motif: the historical narrative of Zopyrus during the Achaemenid era, the historical narrative of the battle of Peroz I with the Hephthalites during the Sassanid era, the story of the Crows and the Owls in Kelileh va Demneh and the story of the Christian Torturing King in the first book of Masnavi-ye Ma’navi. In order to provide a comprehensive view, at first, we give a summary of each of these four narratives (descriptive level) and then we explain their commonalities and differences (analytical level). The first narrative is about a Persian man named Zopyrus, who helped Darius the Great to conquer Babylon with a trick. The second narrative tells the story of a man from the companions of Akhshunwar, the ruler of the Hephthalites, who led to the defeat of the Sassanid army by gaining the trust of Peroz I. The third narrative depicts the conflict between two groups of birds, crows and owls, which ends in favor of the first group with the cleverness and cunning of a crow. The fourth narrative is the story of a Jewish king who, with the trick of his minister, causes internal conflict and mass killing of Christians. As can be seen, in all these four narratives, gaining the enemy’s trust by harming oneself is used as a motif, but the method of processing this motif is different in the aforementioned stories. This research, according to its topic and method, is conducted as library research. The findings of this research show that the main plot is the same in these four narratives, but their processing is different. In addition, the historical narrative of Zopyrus can be considered an ancient source for three other narratives; a source that has been neglected until now.
