Persian Novel

The main objective of this study is to examine different layers of power relations between characters of Persian novels as represented by Afsoone Sabz utilizing Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis framework (1996) which paves the way for decoding social structures that cause verbal abuse in Iran. To this end, Afsoone Sabz novel, written by Takin Hamzeloo, is chosen as the case study. It can be maintained that social structures like gender inequality, socioeconomic status differences, and class struggle determine verbal abuses in Persian. It is reasonable to argue that Hamzeloo uses her text to influence the audience (Iranians in general and Iranian women in particular) to be aware of social practices (gender inequality, socioeconomic status differences, class struggle and power relations) in an attempt to change, if not subvert, power relations (obtain gender equality and remove socio-economic inequality in Iran). The paper suggests that Hamzeloo uses othering strategy, as a powerful rhetorical tool, to portray the pessimistic outlook Iranian men hold about women through verbal abuse.

In this article, the status of the Persian novel has been investigated via an interdisciplinary approach during the last hundred years. The research starts with the emergence of the Persian novel and continues up to the 2010s/1390s A.H., and it looks into the selected novels from a sociological outlook, i.e., studying literature within its social, cultural, political and historical context. The introduction of modernism into the Iranian society paved the way for the advent of this newly emerging type of literature in Persian literary tradition. Moreover, changes in the political and social structure of the Iranian society led to the establishment and the formation of various periods in the history of the Persian novel. Besides, communication with the modern world and accordingly familiarity with modern world literature through translation had also a considerable role in this process of transformation. To support the claims made in this research, examples will be presented from different novels written during the aforementioned period.