Symbolic analysis of legends of Khaf; with an emphasis on ritual symbols

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 University of birjand, humanity sciences faculty, department of Persian language and literature

2 Department of Persian Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature and Human Sciences, Birjand University, Birjand, Iran.

3 Assistant Professor of Persian language and literature/University of Birjand

10.22077/jcrl.2024.7121.1089

Abstract

Oral literature reflects the social and cultural life and shows the character, feelings and beliefs of each society. Folk legends are born from people's thoughts and emotions and have a lot of capacity for semantic analysis, and mainly symbols have a fundamental role in this context. These legends are the manifestation of the culture of every society and originated from the initial beliefs and imaginations of the people. Among the legends of Khaf city, which mainly have a symbolic texture, two stories "Kakolzari and Dandanmarwarid" and "Sultan and Heydarbeg" with the special narration of this city have been selected for symbolic analysis. These stories have a significant ability to create meaning and especially show the presence of ritual concepts in symbols in a bold way. This study has analyzed these two stories by explaining their ritual concepts and first answered the question of which part of culture the symbols in the text originated from and then examined the mental concepts and the frequency of ritual thoughts in the stories. According to the obtained results, most of the symbols are taken from the environment and material culture of the city, and they are often present in the text with a ritual concept. Considering the harsh geographical conditions of Khaf city, it seems that people have tried to gain belonging to a group as a form of security by giving religious and mystical meaning to the material and natural elements of their surroundings and by participating in stories, myths

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Journal of Ritual Culture and Literature
Volume 3, Issue 1 - Serial Number 5
September 2024
Pages 77-98

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