Document Type : scientific-research
Author
Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Parallel imagery is one of the lesser-known artistic tricks in the world of fiction, in which the author uses some of the important mental and intellectual concepts in the plot in the form of objective and tangible images without showing the direct relation between them once or more time. It directly embeds these concepts in the text of the story, and these objective images are, in a way, confirming and embodying those abstract concepts. This artistic trick is formed in such a way that usually one or more sub-stories run parallel to the main story, which are, in fact, another form of the main story; Or the main and sub-characters of the story are embodied and reproduced in the form of several other characters. The sum of these characters and parallel narrative actions, which are not very visible in the first reading, makes the plot more powerful and effective. Obviously, such sub-stories should not be confused with the ancient artistic technique of "story in story". It seems that the function of visual parallelism in fictional literature has many similarities with the function of equation style in Persian poetry tradition which is a kind of compound simile. In some contemporary Iranian short stories, this artistic trick has been used well. In the equation style, the poet, in one hemistich, presents a statement or a mental and rational proposition, and in another hemistich, to confirm it, he/ she presents an objective and tangible image of the world around him. This paper, while showing and analyzing examples of this artistic and literary technique in “The Old Man and The Sea” by Ernest Hemingway, and two Iranian stories “Owsane ye Baba Sobhan” by Mahmud Dowlat Abadi and “Jayi digar” by Goli Taraghi, considers the parallel imagery as an extended form of Persian poetry equation style in fiction and shows that parallel imagery has a wider and more obscure range of art than the equation style.
Keywords