تاریخ ادبیات (Jun 2010)
A new look at the story of Kay Kavus based on the theory of deconstruction
Abstract
Knowing the cultural and social situation today without a proper understanding of the past is very difficult and sometimes impossible. Mythical forces, whose nature needs to be analyzed, introduce us to some of the cultural barriers and their hidden power. Examining the Shahnameh from the point of view of how innovation, renewal, and desire for change has faced the strong barrier of tradition and what punishments have resulted, helps to better understand the intellectual framework of Iranian society. It seems that one of the reactions of tradition against innovation in Iranian culture is to turn reality upside down. This feature is well visible in the story of Kavus. Kavus has a negative character in Shahnameh more than any Iranian king. The secret of this negative image comes back to his modernist approach to traditional life. Is it possible that tradition and traditionalists have presented an inverted image of Kavus's performance? According to the authors, in the text of the epic, there are signs of inversion and distortion of reality about this myth. The three main actions of Kay Kavus, which have caused the traditionalist forces of the saga to attribute him to indiscretion, are: 1- Mazandaran war, 2- illegitimacy (marriage to Sudabeh and Siavash's mother), 3- flying to the sky. In each of these three acts, the desire for rationalism and innovation can be recognized from the heart of myth and epic, that is, the text that was under the control of tradition. Re-reading or, in other words, reverse reading parts of the Shahnameh - in which the reality is more likely to change - will lead to a new reading of the Shahnameh and Iranian culture. A reading that takes the audience out of the constraints of the text and puts a different reality in front of them.
