Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Islamic Azad University of Mahabad, Mahabad. Iran
2
Ph.D. Candidate in Persian Language and Literature, Islamic Azad University, Mahabad Branch, Mahabad, Iran
3
Assistant Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Islamic Azad University, Mahabad Branch, Mahabad, Iran
Abstract
Drawing on Greimasian narrative semiotics, this study reconsiders the application of this theoretical framework in the analysis of folk narratives and argues that its reduction to purely formal models undermines an adequate understanding of the relationship between narrative structure and the value systems and discursive formations embedded in the text. To address this limitation, the article offers a critical re-reading of Greimas’s theoretical propositions, informed by contemporary interpretations, and proposes an analytical framework that integratively examines three interrelated levels: the narrative program, the actantial configuration, and the organization of semantic oppositions within the cultural discourse of the text. This framework is applied to a close analysis of the complete Kurdish epic poem Khorshid-e Khāvar, authored by Ali Kamal-Agha. The research adopts a qualitative, descriptive–analytical methodology, with data collected through library-based research. The findings demonstrate that the narrative structure of the epic, through the systematic configuration of narrative programs and the protagonist’s gradual progression from desire to competence, performance, and sanction, culminates in the production and stabilization of ethical legitimacy and royal authority. In this process, Khorshid, as the central actant, undergoes a formative trajectory of ethical qualification and political agency, while the text’s underlying semantic oppositions ultimately converge in the overarching semiotic square of ethics/power. Accordingly, the study shows that Greimasian semiotics, when employed in a non-reductionist and discourse-oriented manner, provides a productive framework for elucidating the mechanisms through which meaning and ideology are generated in folk narratives.
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