Masnavi and the Style of Story within a Story مقالة

ملخص الجهاز:

" (Ritter, 1379, 3/1-4) Among the books in which the story-within-a-story style is noticeable, Attar's poems have greater importance in terms of the influence they have on Rumi's narrative. The sub-stories are all narrated briefly and simply, and they never overshadow the main story; as Professor Forouzanfar reminds us—especially regarding Musibat-nameh—the only escape that Attar turns to, where he abandons the preoccupation with the overall structure and the plot of the narrative, is love and the description of the beloved. In Musibat-nameh, before the beginning of the mother story's narrative, when Attar speaks to the audience about the "basis" and "method" of his book, he emphasizes several times the theme of suluk, the main character, and the type of seeker. (Attar, 1383, 423-425) By delving into the central concept of suluk in Attar's narrative, another point can be reached; if the mother story represents the totality of the search and the journey and spiritual path, the inner stories each recount a "time," a "state," and a "station" of the stages of suluk. Among these three poems, and perhaps all Persian verse and prose narrative literature where the totality of the work possesses a comprehensive story in which sub-stories are embedded, none have a structure more complete than Mantiq al-Tayr. An important feature that is striking in Rumi's narration is that in the Masnavi, when the narrator abandons one tale and moves on to another, unlike other storytellers—from the oldest narrators of Sanskrit texts to Attar—in most cases, he does not demarcate the sub-story enclosed within the main and mother story and has no fear of preserving its sanctity.