Assistant professor, Department of Persian language and literature, faculty of literature, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran. , e.khojaste@alzahra.ac.ir
Abstract: (196 Views)
Northrop Frye, a Canadian theorist, calls the narrative aspect of literary work mythos and the thematic aspect of a work as dianoia in his theories and believes that all literary works are rooted in mythology. This article examines the novel Autumn is the last season of the year based on Northrop Frye theory with a descriptive-analytical method to show that it was influenced by mythos and dianoia in terms of narrative and theme. The narrative in this novel is divided into two parts, summer and autumn, and shows the transition from romance to tragedy. In his mythological system, Fry attributes the genres to the seasons of the year and considers it a symbol of the mythos of summer and autumn. According to Fry, the images of the summer stage symbolize the heavenly images and the autumn stage images symbolize the hellish images that finally show a world harmonious with the analogies of experience and full of tragic theme. Dianoia is reproduced in the form of an archetype of rebirth and they reach the stage of Initiate. The mythological backgrounds in this novel are a trick to represent women’s social problems and regenerate myth of Eternal woman.
Introduction
Northrop Frye (1912-1991), a Canadian literary theorist and critic, synthesized on Carl Gustav Jung’s school of analytical psychology and, in particular, the mythological system of the famous poet William Blake of the Romantic school, to develop a different mythological system that, as a literary theory, presents a coherent picture of the recurring patterns of myths. In his most well-known book, The Anatomy of Criticism, he defines a mythological root for all literary works to the extent that literary genres fall into his mythological categories. At the beginning of this work, Frye establishes a dialectical structure between music and painting, showing that myth, as the origin and goal of all literary genres, simultaneously has two structures: mythos or a musical structure and dianoia or a pictorial structure based on the pattern of static images; Then it is concluded that the structure of literature, just like music and painting, is simultaneously based on rhythm and pattern.
Methodology
The analysis of the two terms mythos and dianoia in Frye’s mythological theory, followed by a rereading of the novel Autumn is the Last Season of the Year based on that framework, leads to the discovery and analysis of secondary meanings within the work, which the following essay will address. This novel, first published in 2014 and later selected for the Jalal Al-Ahmad Literary Award, well reflects the mythological formats intended by Frye. For this purpose, the interconnected aspects of mythos and dianoia in the work will be examined in the following, as the present article seeks to reread the novel semantically through this framework. The narrative form of the novel is divided into two main parts, Summer and Autumn. Each part consists of three subsections, each narrated by a different first-person narrator. The first section of the summer part is narrated by Leila, the second by Shabaneh, and the third by Roja.
Discussion
In the Autumn part, the narrative sequence follows the same order. In the Summer part, the ideal world of these three girls is represented. The second part of the work is named Autumn, a section in which the passionate dreams of these three girls fade away, and one by one, they step into the real world—a world full of painful realities and failures that marks the entry into the period of maturity and experience, confronting them with the hardships of life. In the Autumn section of this novel, heavenly images gradually transform into hellish images—consistent with the analogy of experience, which arises from the bitter experiences of the hero and life in realistic worlds that are far removed from mythological manifestations. The failure of the characters in the story corresponds to the fall of the tragic hero, and in accordance with this failure, heavenly images give way to hellish ones. The dianoia of the novel in question is a “combination of heavenly and hellish images,” and in line with the development of Frye’s theory, citing this novel, it can be said that a work can reproduce a combination of hellish and heavenly images in its dianoia. Thus, it is not long before the main theme of these heavenly and hellish themes gives a two-faced image to the dianoia of the work; but gradually a major part of this work is devoted to lower mimesis, as the paradise of the lives of these three young girls transforms into an autumnal hell. In fact, according to Frye’s theory, if the hero is neither superior to other humans nor to his environment, he is one of us ordinary humans, and in such circumstances, the work also enjoys high-frequency realist characteristics.
Conclusion
The mental images and descriptions of the heroes in the Summer section are rich with imagery that embodies a more or less ideal world; however, their empirical images and descriptions in the Autumn section depict the collapse of their hopes and desires. Therefore, from the perspective of the division of literary types, this novel is influenced by the two genres of romance and tragedy, and based on Frye’s theory of mythology, it represents the transition from the summer mythos to the autumn mythos. The work’s mythological mythos and dianoia in the Summer section correspond to heavenly images, while in the Autumn section they align with hellish images. This is because, in Frye’s mythological system, the ideal world is consistent with the settings of myths and heavenly images. Yet by passing through myth and romance and entering the realistic world, the hero descends from heaven to hell—a manifestation of the world in which he lives. This pattern mirrors the fate of the main characters in the novel. Although the work’s dianoia is a combination of the ideal world and lower simulations, a significant portion is dominated by infernal imagery and lower mimesis. The characters also undergo the autumn mythos and arrive at a stage of awakening and inner recognition, which, according to Jung’s view, is a symbol of the individual’s psychological maturity and self-awareness. At this stage, signs of the rebirth archetype in personality development emerge through their psychological actions. After this phase, they distinguish themselves from their predecessors in terms of intellectual and spiritual growth, ultimately reaching the stage of “the myth of the eternal woman”. The dianoia of the myth in this work is consistent with Fry’s view that all literary works have a mythical root. Thus, a rereading of the novel based on the two concepts of mythos and dianoia shows that using these mythological approaches to explain the social status of the characters, and especially in this novel, the critical examination of categories such as divorce, marriage, immigration, and women’s education in contemporary Iranian society, can function as means for criticizing and representing women’s social issues.
Article Type:
Original Research |
Subject:
Mythical Criticism Received: 2024/05/20 | Accepted: 2025/05/21 | Published: 2025/05/31