A Comparison Between the Stories of Birds in Attar's Manteqh-al-Tair and the Story of Ulysses in Homer's Odyssey.

Abstract

In some cases, mystical poets have taken advantage of epic concepts, motifs, and sometimes symbols in order to express their inner states and revelations to their audiences. Sometimes, this barrowing is evident enough to make the audience believe that the poet had an epic text in mind, as in Mantegh-al-Tair, Attar had some works of epic literature, like Shahnameh, in mind. These similarities, on the one hand, and the recognition of a rather new subgenre of epic literature, i.e., mystical epic, on the other hand, as well as the theme of the hero’s journeys and their almost similar stages motivated a comparative study of similarities, as in the narrative structure, and common motifs in Attar’s Mantegh-al-Tair and Homer’s Odyssey. Comparing the two works, the following results were given: a) There are considerable similarities in their narrative structures. b) They have numerous common motifs in them. c) The hero’s journey archetype, as considered by Joseph Campbell, and its three main phases are evident in them.

Keywords

• odyssey
• narrative structure
• manteqh-al-tair
• motif