Retrospection as a component of the nostalgia of Paradise Lost in narratives of critical socialism

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Graduated with a PhD in Persian Language and Literature, University of Mazandaran

2 Assistant Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Bojnurd University

10.29252/kavosh.2025.23006.3693

Abstract

The present study aims to introduce retrospection as one of the components of nostalgia in Paradise Lost by analyzing the discourse that dominated the political and literary atmosphere from 1941 to 1953. For this purpose, nine narratives, including eight short narratives by Sadegh Hedayat, Sadegh Choobak, and Ebrahim Golestan, were selected due to their socialist and critical nature from the collections "Sag-e Velgard", "Kheymeh Shab Bazi" and "Azar, the Last Month of Autumn", as well as "Bahar-e Omr", a critical narrative by Mohammad Masoud. These texts were studied and examined. The research findings indicate that the “paradise lost” in critical socialist narratives is in clear contrast to party narratives. While party narratives present a futuristic image of a classless society by emphasizing collective ideals, revolutionary spirits, and hope for the future. Critical narratives describe an individual that is experienced and nostalgic of paradise that is filled with despair, dissatisfaction, and passivity. In these narratives, the expression of dissatisfaction with the existing conditions and government policies is manifested in four ways: temporal and subjective retrospection, spatial retrospection and reconstruction, archaism or antiquarianism, and criticism of authoritarian and superficial modernity. While using these components to paint a static, hopeless, fatalistic image of the characters, dominated by invisible networks of power, the authors criticize the authoritarian modernization of the first Pahlavi period and instill in the audience the implicit ideology of returning to oneself in the form of a mechanism or returning to the past.

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References

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