The Representation of the Reconstruction of Female Identity in the Folk Narrative “The Shepherd Monkey” Based on Feminist Theories
Document Type : پژوهشی اصیل
Authors
1
PhD Candidate in Art Research, Faculty of Art and Architecture, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.
2
Associate Professor, Department of Theatre and Film, Faculty of Art and Architecture, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Folk literature and oral narratives, as integral components of collective cultural and historical memory, constitute a significant field for the representation of power relations, gender, and identity. The folk narrative “The Shepherd Monkey” from the Sonqor region of Kermanshah, with its female-centered structure, is a notable example of stories that, on the surface, depict women’s suffering and subjugation, yet in their deeper layers reveal possibilities of resistance, re-creation, and the reconstruction of feminine identity. Drawing on feminist criticism and relying on the theories of Gilbert and Gubar, Elaine Showalter, and Julia Kristeva, this study demonstrates how the female body, space, and agency in the narrative shift from a position of exclusion and passivity to one of subjectivity and the appropriation of power.
Keywords
Subjects
Afsanehzadeh, F., & Azizi, M. (2017). Rereading women-centered Kurdish narratives from a feminist perspective. Journal of Women’s Studies Research, 10(2), 77–98.
Bartky, S. L. (1990). Femininity and domination: Studies in the phenomenology of oppression. Routledge.
Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture, and the body. University of California Press.
De Lauretis, T. (1987). Technologies of gender: Essays on theory, film, and fiction. Indiana University Press.
Ghasemi, F., & Rezaei, M. (2021). A feminist analysis of women’s folk stories from Mazandaran. Persian Language and Literature Studies, 12(3), 56–74.
Gilbert, S. M., & Gubar, S. (1979). The madwoman in the attic: The woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination. Yale University Press.
Hines, D. (2001). Gender and power in folktale structures: A symbolic reading. Journal of Folklore Research, 38(1), 42–59.
Irigaray, L. (1985). This sex which is not one. Cornell University Press.
Kaynes, D. (2010). Embodied resistance: Rural women and oral storytelling in Sub-Saharan Africa. Feminist Studies, 36(3), 445–468.
Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of horror: An essay on abjection (translated by L. S. Roudiez). Columbia University Press.
Kristeva, J. (1984). Revolution in poetic language (translated by M. Waller). Columbia University Press.
Moradi, S. (2022). Inter-female violence in Kurdish folklore: A critical rereading. Cultural Studies of Iranian Ethnic Groups, 4(2), 89–108.
Rahmani, N. (2019). An examination of feminine archetypes in Iranian folktales. Journal of Folk Culture Studies, 9(1), 112–130.
Showalter, E. (1977). A literature of their own: British women novelists from Brontë to Lessing. Princeton University Press.
Showalter, E. (1979). Toward a feminist poetics. In E. Showalter (Ed.), The new feminist criticism: Essays on women, literature, and theory (pp. 22–41). Pantheon.
Showalter, E. (1985). The female malady: Women, madness and English culture, 1830–1980. Virago.
Tohidy, Sh. (2015). A feminist analysis of Iranian folk narratives. Woman in Culture and Art, 6(4), 45–66.
