Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Shirzad Tayefi ¹
• Parisa Nasiri ²

¹ Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran

² PhD student of Persian language and literature, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Sociological criticism is one of the prominent approaches in the field of literary theory and criticism that focuses on examining the connection between literary texts and society, as well as the key role of social factors in creating literary works. Postmodern fiction, due to its dialectical relationship with the society and its political and social context, is a suitable option for reading through sociological perspectives. Mohammadreza Kateb is one of the postmodern writers who, through creating the novel "Hees" in the seventies, has expressed many social concerns, modernism, and human alienation in his work. In the current research, we aim to analyze the novel "Hees" based on the sociological criticism of Lucien Goldmann in a qualitative and quantitative manner to demonstrate the sociological analysis capacities of this postmodern narrative and its achievements. The research findings indicate that in accordance with Goldmann's theory, through two methods of description and analysis, Kateb reflects a postmodern societal worldview and its consequences in his work, employing symbolic characters and the motif of repeated themes of death in the narrative, uncertainty, contradiction, emptiness, and people's loneliness in the seventies of Iran's history.