Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• Narges Oskouie

Department of Persian Language and Literature, Bon.C., Islamic Azad University, Bonab, Iran.

Abstract

The epic poem Kourosh-nameh, authored by Afsar al-Muluk Amiri, is one of the scarce examples of female epic poetry in contemporary Persian literature. It reinterprets Achaemenid history through an ethically-driven, religious, and traditionalist narrative. The main issue of this research is to investigate how a female poet, when confronted with a male-dominated and royal historical genre, finds opportunities to intervene in the narration of the past. Relying on the concept of “gender as an analytical category” in Joan Scott’s theory and the notion of “women’s narrative authority” in Susan Lanser’s ideas, this article demonstrates that the ethical-centeredness of Kourosh-nameh cannot be solely attributed as a marker of the text’s femininity; this characteristic is also intertwined with other discourses such as Pahlavi traditionalism, religious ethics, and the Persian didactic tradition. Nevertheless, an examination of the narrative’s pacing, the reduction of violent descriptions, the presence of a dictatorial narrator, the redefinition of political legitimacy, and the exclusion or limitation of female voices reveals that Amiri, within these very dominant discourses, creates a form of limited, negotiatory, and contradictory narrative intervention—an intervention that can also be examined in relation to the author’s gendered position. Consequently, Kourosh-nameh is not a feminine narrative in the inherent and fixed sense of the word, but rather a text that illuminates the possibilities and limitations of female agency within the historical-epic genre.

Keywords

• Traditionalism
• Female Agency
• Feminist Historiography
• Historical Narrative

Main Subjects

• Literature