Journal of Literary Criticism

Journal of Literary Criticism

The Syntactic Pattern of Narration in the Story of Sheikh Sanan Based on the Pattern of the Mother Rhythm in Classical Iranian Narratives; From the Perspective of Discourse Semiotics

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
1 PhD graduate in Persian Language and Literature, Razi University, Kermanshah. Iran
2 Master's degree in General Linguistics, Razi University, Kermanshah.Iran
10.22034/jlc.2026.541820.1763
Abstract
From the perspective of semiotics-discursive semantics, characters in classical narratives become subjects when they try to produce or repair and establish the meaning of "having". Therefore, each of these subjects has a narrative that usually follows a comprehensive pattern called the "mother rhythm pattern" in terms of narrative syntactic structure, which has a tripartite structure with various variables. The mother rhythm pattern is a flexible pattern that can be adapted to the syntactic structure of various classical narratives. The narrative of Sheikh Sanan is an allegorical-mystical story in which characters such as Sheikh Sanan, Sheikh Sanan's disciples, and Tersa's daughter are present, each of whom initiates an action process in pursuit of achieving something in the outside world. Therefore, each of these subjects can have narratives with their own syntactic structure in the narrative of Sheikh Sanan's story. In this study, which is based on the analytical-comparative method and the discourse semiotic-semantic approach, an attempt was made to analyze the syntactic structure of the narratives within the story of Sheikh Sanan - from Attar's book Mantiq al-Tayr - based on the mother rhythm pattern, and to clarify how the meaning of "having" appears in these narratives. The findings of this study showed that the narratives within this story have different syntactic structures based on the mother rhythm pattern, and the meaning of having is destroyed and died in the story of Sheikh Sanan, and is produced, repaired, and established in the stories of the Terrible Girl and the Disciples, respectively.
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Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 04 April 2026

  • Receive Date 17 August 2025
  • Revise Date 07 February 2026
  • Accept Date 24 February 2026