Novel: Factual Reality or Representational Narrative? A Study of Verisimilitude Techniques in Early Persian Novels

This study intends to investigate verisimilitude techniques and provisions in early Persian novels. In order to do this, various techniques of verisimilitude deployed in novels written from 1300 to 1320 (1920-1940) are extracted and categorized. Then the rationale behind this usage and their relation to the conventions and presuppositions of the novel on one hand, and the social context of that period on the other hand, are analyzed. The authors of that period have vouched for the reality of the events of the stories from authentification narrative strategies and at time, quite directly, presented some viewpoints concerning the relation of the novels’ content to reality, asserting those events as the reiteration of objective realities. Insistence on rendering the events of the novel as reality has its roots in the embryonic nature of this medium, belief in pedagogical function of the novel, prejudices against this new medium, and the intellectuals’ belligerent stance on it.