Investigating and Analyzing the Didactic Characteristics of Qaboosnāmeh by Focusing on the Parent-Child Relationships on the Basis of Roland Barthes' Theory of the Five Codes

Subject Areas : شاهنامه

Rahmatollah Haghtalab ¹ , Mahdi Novrooz ² , Mahboobeh ZiaKhodadadian ³

1 - Ph.D. Student of Persian Language and Literature, Neyshabur Branch, Islamic Azad University, Neyshabur, Iran
2 - Assistant Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Neyshabur Branch, Islamic Azad University, Neyshabur, Iran (corresponding author)
3 - Assistant Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Neyshabur Branch, Islamic Azad University, Neyshabur, Iran

Received: 2022-04-19 Accepted : 2022-04-19 Published : 2022-05-22

Keywords: Roland Barthes, Onṣor-al-Maʿāli, Qaboosnāmeh, Didactic educations, The Five Codes,

Abstract :

Qaboosnāmeh is one of the didactic and educational literary texts in Persian literature. With a kind of iconoclasm, Onṣor-al-Maʿāli sometimes complicates the language and make the meanings difficult to be gotten by consciously breaking away from the tradition. He inserts codes into the underlying layers of the text and by doing so, he guides the keen audience towards the meaning. In the contemporary area, one of the major branches of semiotics is analyzing new dimensions of a text, which is called cryptography. Roland Barthes has done researches in this realm and has divided the codes into five types of action, hermeneutic, symbolic, semantic and cultural; he has also described a function for each. The present article, by using library sources and descriptive-analytical method explored the ethical foundations of parent-child relationships in two chapters of Qaboosnāmeh (ninth and twenty-seventh) based on Barthes' cryptographic theory to explore the secondary purposes of the author in narrating the didactic tales. The general results of the research show that at the level of cultural codes, both religious ideology and intertextuality have had a comprehensive occurrence in explaining the educating. Hermeneutic codes have been effective in representing the ambiguous dimensions of the didactic narrative. Binary oppositions in symbolic codes emphasize the recurrent contrast between good and evil. Examining the semantic codes, it has been found that the storyteller used religious words and phrases, explained the meaning-oriented semantic system. In addition, to strengthen the audience's awareness, he explained his desired educational points. Furthermore, his using the action codes has also had a significant effect on the objectification of moral relationships between children and parents.