Since the 1930s, narratives of the fundamental story of the Arash myth have been narrated by contemporary Iranian writers. These narratives have read this myth with impressions that are influenced and appropriate to the intellectual, cultural and political currents of the society of their era. The common denominator of all these narratives are the dual confrontations that constantly repeat themselves in the narration process. The confrontation between Arash and the people, between Iran and Turan, and even between Arash and his own self. For a clear analysis of the structure in mythology, Strauss calls it in his own way as Asturaj. This method, which originated from linguistics, is a suitable method for analyzing this myth. In this research, an attempt is made to study five contemporary texts that focus on the myth of Arash and by using the method of separating the constituent parts of the myth according to Strauss, to address the differences between the retellings of the myth of Arash in the mentioned texts. The idea of knowing myth as a form of language has always been of interest among mythologists. Myth, in its roots, before stories and legends, was alive in the discourse of humans, and it was considered a form of language for communication between humans, and it was also the way of thinking of previous humans. Claude Lévi-Strauss, by studying the origin of mythology, had noticed the existence of dual oppositions of their ancient foundations. In the book Raw and Cooked, Strauss sees the dual opposition as two parallel lines that flow into each other.
Extended Abstract
The idea of understanding myth as a form of language has always been popular among mythologists. When we look for the roots of mythology and find out that before stories and legends they were alive in the discourse of humans and were actually a form of language to communicate, we mostly come to the fact that mythology was the way of thinking of earlier humans. Claude Lévi-Strauss, by studying the origins of mythology and most of European mythology, notices the existence of dual oppositions in their ancient origins. In Iranian mythology, these dual confrontations are also clearly visible. The basic idea of Iranian mythology is based on the battle between good and bad or good and evil. This idea repeats itself in Iranian mythology; Ahuramazda and Ahriman, Jamshid and Zahhak, Iran and Turan, etc., even in some Iranian myths, whose stories are about the same character, this dual opposition can be seen. Like the story of Zarvan, who was born as good and bad, he faced a double conflict with his doubts. Strauss presents this idea in his book Raw and Cooked. But he does not see this double opposition as two parallel lines that never meet, but believes that they flow into each other. In fact, Strauss considers myth as a kind of basic structure for understanding cultural communication. He believes that these connections mainly emerge with dual confrontations or contradictions. Like raw and cooked. They contradict each other. Raw is associated with nature and cooked shows culture. It is these contradictions that create a kind of basic structure for all the ideas and thoughts of every culture.
In order to better understand and analyze these contrasts, Strauss proposes a method called Asturaj, which uses phonology in linguistics, helps to better analyze the myth, and in the following, we use the same method to analyze the retellings of the myth of Arash. For this reason, we studied the retellings of the myth of Arash, which have been written by contemporary writers, who have different accounts of what was in his original story.
Since the end of the 1930s, the legend of Arash, which was less discussed among Iranian legends (due to the absence of his story in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh), has been re-read and in these re-readings, it has gained a new life among Iranians. This book was initially compiled by Ehsan Yarshater in the collection of stories of ancient Iran, which presents a two-page narrative of the story of Arash Kamangir to the audience for the first time in the modern era, and with the recognition of this myth, Siavash Kasraei, Arsalan Pouria, Nader Ebrahimi, Bahram Beyzai and Siavash Hemti wrote their different interpretations of this myth. Undoubtedly, the political and social situation ruling Iran at the time of writing these works was not without influence, but when we analyze the myth from within and analyze the contradictions between the elements that make up the structure of each narrative, we come to find distinctions, the study of which can lead us to learn more about the function of this ancient myth in today's times.
