The Study of Narrative Structure in the Tales of Jami’s Baharestan based on Structuralist Poetics of Tzvetan Todorov

Abstract

Jami’s Baharestan enjoys a prominent place amongst the works imitating Sa’di’s Guletan. The presence of prominent discoursal aspects in the narratives of Jami provides the ground for analyzing those narratives in terms of structuralist theories like Todorov’s theory in order to find out whether they have a proper narrative structure or not? And how much do they conform to the ideas of Todorov? Todorov considers three aspects for narratives: semantic, discoursal and syntactic. Due to loose plot and weak structure, most tales of Baharestan are so that other critical approaches cannot be used for analyzing them. However, in terms of discoursal aspect, especially the four elements of aspect, tense, viewpoint and tone can be interpreted via Todorov’s model and theory in this text.

Keywords

• narrative
• Structuralism
• Poetics
• Tzvetan Todorov
• discoursal aspect