Document Type : Research article
Authors
1 Phd Student
2 Associate Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz Branch, Iran
3 Assistant Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz Branch, Iran
Abstract
Highlights
Study of the Decline of Metanarratives in the Novel “Kouliye Kenâr-e Âtaš” by Moniro Ravâni-pur[1]
Introduction
Metanarratives are the dominant narratives and pervasive ideological and philosophical systems that legitimize social activities, institutions, and structures and cultural values and forms. These narratives depicted a promising image of the future of mankind and previously, they seemed to be able to explain and classify human experience and consciousness and provide the possibility of evaluating the “truth”. However, in postmodern world, they could not organize human life and gradually lost their credibility. Postmodernists believe that the creation and diversity of human social lifestyles is so vast that no metanarrative can judge its authenticity, and that any attempt to impose any of these metanarratives on society reduces diversity and creativity, and causes repression and rejection of the people who do not coordinate with them; thus the postmodern literary world offers us something that is inexplicable and denies the presented ideologies and paradigms, and dissolves them, leading to the collapse of the whole of those narratives. In the postmodern context, stories with local credibility proportionated with the local language, culture, history, and geography are replaced with metanarratives. Breaking the borders between reality and fantasy, uncertainty, de-ideology and etc. and the collapse of metanarratives are the characteristics of "postmodern" works. Accordingly, postmodernism has been described as skepticism of metanarratives, and the decline of metanarratives has been considered an important feature of postmodernist stories.
Goal
Examining the decline of metanarratives in postmodern story, in addition to making such stories understandable, also explains the contexts and sometimes the causes of metanarrative decline. In this paper, it has been tried to investigate the questionable metanarratives in the story of Kouliye Kenâr-e Âtaš by Moniro Ravâni-pur. This research has two specific questions: First, what are the degenerated metanarratives in the story of the Kouliye Kenâr-e Âtaš? Also, what method did the author use in her story to narrate the decline of metanarratives? Therefore, the study of degenerated metanarratives in the story of the Kouliye Kenâr-e Âtaš and the study of the Ravâni-pur’s method in the narrative of the decline of metanarratives are the specific goals of the present study.
Method
This research is a qualitative, theoretical and developmental study with a critical nature in the field of literary and interdisciplinary studies. The research method is content analysis. The theoretical connection with narration of the stories and analysis of the concepts and contents is so that at first, various definition and interpretations of postmodernism have been collected and classified in documentary method from different resources based on the research theoretical foundation and then the studied story has been analyzed according to the defined viewpoint and related textual evidences.
Conclusion
The decline of many metanarratives with biological, religious, social, and rational and knowledge and wisdom-based behaviors is narrated in the story of “Kouliye Kenâr-e Âtaš”. As the evidence and analysis of the present paper show, Ravâni-pur has reconstructed the scene of traditional life in a story to narrate the decline of metanarratives in the postmodern atmosphere, and has been able to create a complex and intricate atmosphere with skillful symbolism that depict the most important feature of postmodern human, namely anonymity. “Kouliye Kenâr-e Âtaš” is the story of burning metanarratives. The collapse of social traditions, with its resistance to patriarchy and violence against women, the breach of the right of girls’ education, discrediting of the traditional marriage tradition, and collapse of the nomadic tradition are prominent in this story. Skepticism in the political metanarratives of decades of Iranian history and violation of the principles of classical style storytelling- as a great narrative- with the failure of the author's authority, incoherence of the text, de-familiarization in characterization are other major narratives which are blurred in this story. Although these processes take place in the author's sample society (Gypsies), the relationship of some of the characters in the story with people outside the nomadic life, as well as the real lifestyle of the Iranian people outside the story community, show that metanarratives are declining in Iranian society. Ravâni-pur, with the help of living symbols and by presenting a clear image of a declining social unit, has simulated and recreated the gradual sunset of metanarratives in Iranian society.
Keywords: metanarrative decline, postmodern, Ravâni-pur, Kouliye Kenâr-e Âtaš
References
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[1] Maniže Farjiyân Mohtaram: Ph.D. Student of Persian Language and Literature, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran.
Ali Dehqân: Associate Professor of Persian Literature, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran (Corresponding Author).
Ayyub Kušân: Assistant Professor of Persian Literature, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran.
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