simin daneshvar’ history in iranian literary field

according to bourdieu’s cultural theory, the author’s trajectory reflects the dialectical relationship between his or her habitus and conditions of the literary field in a given historical situation. habitus is dialectically tied to the field and constructed with different capitals. in an author’s habitus, cultural capital plays the main role as the most significant capital. the field of literary production prepares an appropriate atmosphere in which the author breaths, grows and gains his or her literary capitals. the literary field is distinguished from other fields by cultural capital as its currency. the different conditions of the field can be displayed on a spectrum from the heterogeneous pole in one side to the homogenous pole in the other side. different conditions of the literary field reveal a variety of relationships between this field and the field of power. if the field of power respects the borders of the literary field and does not invade its territory, the pure literature will emerge in the pole of limited production. otherwise, the literary field loses its independence and leads to the production of committed literature in the pole of mass production. in this article, the trajectory of simin daneshvar’s literary life as the first woman novelist has been sociologically quested. simin daneshvar’s trajectory results from her positions in the iranian literary field during different historical periods. these various positions that illustrate her literary trajectory depend on the dialectical relationship between her hapitus in one hand, and the conditions of the literary field in the other hand. to distinguish the share of various capitals in the author’s habitus, the process of its construction is explored. these investigations regard the dialectical relationship between the literary field and the author’s habitus, following genetic structuralism as a method that studies the genesis of habitus and field with a historical approach. based on bourdieu’s theoretical and methodological approaches, three novels of simin daneshvar have been studied, adapting to her positions in the literary field during different periods. the structural homologies between daneshvar’s habitus, the literary field and the worlds of novels are obviously apparent in the selected novels. according to simin daneshvar’s several biographies, she was expertise in iranian literature as well as the world literature when she was writing her first novel. this balanced combination of inner and outer cultural capitals allowed daneshvar to write a creative novel that not only provoked literary critics to consider it as an important event, but also promoted her status in the field of literary production. regarding simin daneshvar trajectory, she occupied the centre of the literary field with her first novel, savushun (1969) but she could not retain it with her two other novels— wandering island [jazire-ye sargard?ni] (1992) and wandering cameleer [s?reban-e sargard?n] (2001). this article concludes that the decline of cultural capitals in daneshver’s habitus and distortion of the literary field are major factors that cause her loss of status in this field. after publication of savushun that unpleasantly coincided with jalal al-ahmad’s death, she could not update her knowledge on the contemporary movements in literature and her cultural capitals begun to decrease, at least compared to her past. besides, the literary field had lost its independence and its golden age. the dialectical relationship between these factors propelled simin daneshvar’s position in the literary field, from the center to the margins. this trajectory is represented in her novels and their protagonists. indeed, there is a structural homology between simin daneshvar’s trajectory in the field of literary production and the protagonists’ trajectories in the world of her novels.