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Sociological criticism is one of the modern and efficient methods of the study of literary texts, and today it has a wide application in the analysis of modern literary geners, especially the contemporary Persian novel.                                 This article aims at the analysis and appreciation of the contemporary Persian novel and explores the historical, political, and sociological structure of the Iranian society reflected in some of these novels. The findings of this research show that:

1.Novel is the most complete genre that might respond positively to   modern sociological studies

2.The Persian novel can explain the structures of the Iranian society very well.

3.The more distance we take from the simple structure of the Iranian society in the constitutional age (i.e. , early nineteenth century), the age of the emergence of the first Persian novels, and move towards the more complicated and intricate contemporary society ,the structure of the Persian  novel becomes more complicated and the social themes become more varied and more complex.

4.The themes and subjects treated by the writers of the Persian novels shift from broad generalizations to specific details. This point, on one hand, shows the individualization of the Iranian contemporary man, who has a proper in the modern novel ,and the change of the structures of the society from the ancient simple ,primitive and heroic state to complicated and modern structures  on the other.

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Scary Tehran by Moshfegh Kashani is considered as a pioneering social novel in Iran.In this article, we have tried to examine this novel from the social science perspective in order to explain its semiotics and answer the question of what signs this novel implies and whether the symptoms are ideological. To this end, following some preliminary introduction of the science of semiotics, we have analyzed the manifestation of signs in this literary work. Our findings indicate that the author has efficiently benefited from using signs in order to portray social problems such as social class differences, bipolar social system, and injustice. Further, the author  highlights the ideological concept of the symptoms and signs and how they represent the contrasts between the rich and the poor of late Qajar Tehran.

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In the novel Savushun, the subjects and social, historical, and epic aspects are expressed with a poetic language in the form of a fiction. The epic aspect of the novel is so strong that qualifies it to be in the rank of epic artifacts. The manifestation of national spirit, the existence of an abstract value, representing the public beliefs, necessity of kindness and enmity, the existence of an undefeatable person or a superman, and sharing borders with history are elements of epics, which are present in this novel. The author intends to show, through such a hero, the undefeatable nature of Iran at the time of industrial and military invasion of the west, neutrality of the press, internal turmoil, dependence of the government, ignorance of people and the clergy and the opportunist nature of the parties which pave the way for threatening the country΄s independence. The purpose of the present paper is to indicate similarities of this novel with other epic works and to examine the features of epics in the novel and finally to explain its epic aspects.       

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Having published his first novel, Ali Mohammad Afghani (born in 1925, Kermanshah) reached the top of his literary career. Considering the dearth of creative literary activities in the years following the coup of 18^th August 1953 and other social, literary and historical reasons discussed in the paper, the novel (written in 1961) was remarkably acclaimed by the readers.Following this acclamation, literary critics also appreciated the author as the greatest contemporary novelist and his work as the greatest novel of the century. Although Afghani wrote several other novels, because of certain reasons discussedin the article he could never regain the acceptance of the readers.Now after half a century of the publication of the novel and its becoming one of the classics in the history of contemporary novel-writing in Iran, we have a new study of the role Ali Mohammad Afghani and his outstanding book in the formation and development of Persian novel.Moreover, we try to show how he has been affected by earlier narrative literature and his impact on subsequent novels.In order to clarify the reasons behind the books popularity with the readers and its position among Persian novels, the sociological and literary dimensions of the work are discussed in this article.

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Shohar-e AhooKhanoum, written by Ali Mohammad Afghani, is an excellent andexciting novel which potentiallyreflects the social problems. Due to its capacity in representing the specific social problems, this novel has gained a special status in Iran's contemporary narrative literature. The essentialelements of Realism in this novel show that its writer has been greatly influenced by the principles of Realism, and his basic techniques in the development and organization of the story are primarily Realistic. Afghani tries to adapt the events, characters and other aspects of his novel to the main principles of Realism representing the social realities on the basis of his own observations and experiences. By creating lifelike characters and focusing on social events, the writer puts a clear mirror in front of the reader in which he can observe the problems of the society. This article is mainly an attempt to discuss the Realistic aspects of this novel in order to unravel the hidden aspects of events.  

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One of the new questions that should be studied and discussed in novel is the relationship between language and gender. In this paper, which is an interdisciplinary research, the researchers relying on sociolinguistic studies, especially Lykaf’s theory, intend to study the relationship between language and gender in Shabhaye Tehran and discuss the influence of the gender of the author of the novel on its language and the achievement of the novelist in introducing a language appropriate to the gender of the characters.For this purpose, the language of the male and female characters in the novel has been studied on the basis ofcertain variables, such as the use of standard language, imperative sentences, interrupted speeches, collaborative and competitive dialogues, and finally decisiveness and subjugation. The findings show that the language of the characters is influenced by the author's gender. The elements of feminine language have been repeated with a higher frequency and the author in many ways succeeded in creating a language appropriate to the gender of the characters. The deviation of some variables from linguistic standards indicates the feministic tendencies of the author.

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Shab-e Hol is a novel which due to its time of publication in the midst of the Islamic Revolution was not well received has many structural and technical values ​​for readers, writers, and critics. Because of the much complexity of the narrative and the difficulty of its reading, there are disagreements about the identity of the narrator and the chronological order of the narratives in the few reviews published on the novel. This paper focuses on the time and narrative in this novel and explains the ambiguities of time and narrative and the arrangement of the characters in Shab-e Hol. It further shows that the author consciously intended to write a modern novel and create doubts in the minds of his readers in order to reflect his philosophical insights affected by life in the modern era.

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By looking at Afghanistan novel writing and its ups and downs, some realities about intellectual and literary developments of this society become clear for the audience that require extensive research. One of these realities is Modernism and Postmodernism in the fictional literature of Afghanistan which links the Afghan novelists' society with the contemporary fiction writing society and illustrates the life aspects of an Afghan, especially the life of intellectuals in this country. This article is an attempt to reflect the important Modernist and postmodernist trends of novel writers in Afghanistan through a descriptive-analytical approach by exploring the contemporary novels in Afghanistan after the coup of 7th of Sur (April), 1357. The results suggest that we cannot speak of institutionalization of modernist and postmodernist novel writing in the fictional literature of Afghanistan, but there is an increasing growth of elements and components such as identity crisis of fictional characters, consequences of war and migration of  Afghan men and women, attempts to deconstruct the opposition of man / woman in Afghanistan’s male-dominated writing system, representation of intensive confrontation between traditionalism and modernism, etc. This indicates the emergence of new literary styles in fictional literature in Afghanistan, Quasi-modernist and sometimes Quasi-postmodern styles, which often have been adapted by emigrant intellectuals, following and imitating the western techniques of fiction writing.

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Modernity made widespread changes in the institution of theIranian family reflected in the Persian novels. The aim of this research is to study the effect of modernity on the traditional structure of family based on the novel of Shohar-e Ahoo Khanoom. The method of research is qualitative content analysis. The effect of modernity on the relationship between family members, changeof family functions, presence of women in the society, and marriage and divorce are among the topics which were studied in this research. Afghani tried to depict the changes of Iranian family in the period of the first Pahlavi. The findings of this study shows that modernity diminished the high status of the father in the Iranian family and, on the other hand, women attained independence and individuality and became more active in the society. Moreover, more traditional members of the family developed tendency to modernity, though their understanding of modernity has been superficial.

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Dr. Noon Loves His Wife More than Mussadiqis a modern political novel written by ShahramRahimian. Focusing on psychological complications of politicians, the novelgivesa different view of 1953 coup d'état in Iran. In this study, relying on Bakhtin’s definition of polyphony,we will draw out its examples from the novel and analyze its functionsthrough a descriptive-analytic method. The question to answer in this article is what features polyphony has and howit is realized inthis text. Therefore this article stresses different features of polyphony such asabrupt shift in perspective, polyglossia among the social classes, the presence of various and opposite characteristics in one fictional character, heteroglossia, and intertextuality. Then, these will be investigated in the novel to support the claim that by providing the reader with varied tools, polyphonic novels lead the audience to a new understanding of the text.

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Implied author and implied reader are components of a narrative structure, playing a crucial role in illuminating hidden elements within a text. Therefore, studying these elements in literary works can expose the underlying layers of narration and open up new critical outlooks to the readers. Furthermore and in cases of cinematic adaptations, it explains whether this was the novel or the film that has managed to unravel narrative complexities of the other medium more successfully and better facilitate audience understanding. The novel GavKhuni and its film adaptation are among works in which the plot is not causal, but internal and fluid. Thus, the reader has to decode textual evidence in order to understand how conceptions and viewpoints are formed in characters. Afkhami’s adaptation of GavKhuni is totally loyal and all elements of the story are faithfully mirrored in the film. However, Afkhami has made use of these elements to present his own ideological concepts. Repetition is a method that both the author and the director have used to transfer their ideas to the audience. Using a descriptive-analytical methodology and a narratological and inter-disciplinary approach, the present research attempts to analyze the ways in which implied author and reader are represented in the novel and the film. Since the author and the reader of each era are thrown into their work and new meanings are discovered in fulfillment of their expectations, thus the audience of this novel and film would discover new meanings from out of the narrative text of GavKhuni as well as its adaptation.