Analysis of Dedication to Preceptor in Shahrnoush Parsipour's Novels: Case Study of Sag va Zemestan-e Boland (The Dog and the Long Winter) and Touba va ma'na-ye Shab (Touba and Meaning of Night)

Abstract

There are written works in the field of Persian novels that have frequent explicit and implicit references to mystical issues. These novels often utilize mysticism either as an element for characterization and advancement of the story plot or as an effective factor for presenting the discourse desired by the author. Sag va Zemestan-e Boland (The Dog and the Long Winter) and Touba va ma'na-ye Shab (Touba and Meaning of Night)by Shahrnoush Parsipour are among novels in which mysticism and mystical elements are reflected in various ways. Preceptor and devotion to him in a spiritual journey is one of these mystical themes. In this study, which aimed to examine the place of preceptor and devotion to him in the mentioned works, it was found that in both novels, the temperamental features and sociopolitical circumstances of the time including war, crime, death, suffering, sin and loneliness have led the story characters to incline to mysticism. The manners of some characters in the two stories who, despite taking advantage of the preceptor’s mystical teachings, did not reach spiritual excellence or acted differently from each other may reveal two things: first, the transformation in the author's approach occurred as a result of sociopolitical changes of the two decades of fifty and sixty, and second, her change of attitude about surrender to preceptor. The author establishes the idea that unconditional surrender to preceptor is incompatible with reflective and skeptical spirit of modern man; the fact that manifests itself in the words as well as the behaviors of the characters in the story.

Keywords

• mysticism
• preceptor
• shahrnoush parsipour
• sag va zemestan-e boland (the dog and the long winter)
• touba va ma'na-ye shab (touba and meaning of night)