Journal of Literary Criticism and Rhetoric

Document Type : scientific-research

Author

Assistant Professor in Persian Language and Literature, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

Abstract

Utopian literature, in terms of content, includes the dream of a world with better and ideal conditions or an image of favorable and yet abstract (nowhere) world. Based on a single main motivation, nostalgia and the desire to return to eternal origin and due to the intellectual paradigms form them, this genre has formed certain structures. From the perspective of realizing the origin and having a qualitative analysis of a utopian genre, nostalgia and the fear of deportation to the mundane (slip to the level of consciousness) and proposing an archetypal image of the ideal city and the earthly paradise are the things can be considered as the main causes form the genre. This city has an archetypal structure in mythological narratives (as Heavenly Paradise), fantasy structure in religious and popular narratives, allegorical structure in didactic literature and mysterious structure in mystical literature. Reviewing and paradigm-based classifying this literary genre, its different types in three areas of Mythical Utopia, Philosophical Utopia and Narrative-Didactic Utopia will be studied in present paper, beside the manifestation of these paradigms in Iranian culture and Persian classic literature. 

Keywords