Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies
2 Ph. D. student of Persian language and literature, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies
Abstract
A narrative is a fundamental plan to connect human events and actions. Narrative inquiry/research utilizes the narrative elements to study that fundamental plan. A historical novel describes the ontology of people in a specific period of history based on the events during that period. It reflects people’s emotional and psychological characteristics and rebuilds the social and political situations of the historical period that it narrates. 20th-century philosophical theories cast doubts on the existence of an only truth and a single possible narrative. According to the changes in the definition of history, the meaning of a historical novel would be automatically changed. As an example, these shifts could lead to the existence of plural narratives. This study demonstrates that by changing the definition of a historical novel, its visual and conceptual attributes will also be transformed. Based on Hayden White’s (An American historian and philosopher) Metahistory approach and Gerard Genette’s (A French linguist and literary theorist) narratology theory, this study has redefined the historical novel description. The redefinition of a historical novel presented in this research has spotted three types of historical novels during four decades since the Islamic revolution and studied their structural and conceptual shifts. The narrative and structural characteristics of the researched novels include anachronism, non-linear narrative, a first-person narrator, retrospective narrative, external focalization, multiple personas, the role of the characters in the events, and a new approach to the elements of time and place. Historical novels after the Islamic revolution have often been created around the concept of forgotten history, reflection of individual and collective identity, and critical thinking of history.
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