conjunction and social cleavage liminals in the attar neishabouri’s book titled mantegh-al-tair

in this research paper, we applied rituals of social drama processes to find out symbols, decoding and signs in the manegh-al-tair. in our analysis we discovered that birds, instead of humans, are acting as players in the social stage. each of these birds possess some particular characteristics and social statuses, which are attributed to the humans who lived in the attar time (age). to offer more clarification on the nature of our analysis it should be noted that most of the cultural, social and historical issues of the nations appear in their literary works. therefore narrative analysis is used as an approach for studying semiology and unraveling texts in social sciences researches. taking literature as a social product, its study would generate an understanding about the social and cultural structures of society, as well as the hidden angles and dark traits of the people’s lives. this type of research which refers to literary texts in social sciences became widespread using narrative approach consideration, and the objective was to arrive at semiology as a method of study. we tried to analyze events and actions stories to access story’s basic information regarding the society and its role player actors. in the processes of social actors discourse the main subject of the story, is separation, social groups' conflict, as well as the distance of attar's ideal society from that of real society. in fact the actors of this narration tried to reach the phoenix (simorgh) court, to gain their desires; accordingly they had to pass seven difficult stages to find out the solutions for the conundrum. and through suffering, they wanted to compensate for the social separation and conjunction of the society. the methodology of this research rests upon the secondary sources i.e. mantegh-al-tair book and the other researches investigation about the attar. the aim of this research is to discover codes, signs and symbols as effective factors within the meaning structure as well as the narrative in order to understand events and rites. this will help us to reconstruct the social thought of attar era. we offer textual analysis and searching the relationship between social facts and utopian affairs and ever decoding of symbols and signs as our research strategy for studying culture. access to social phenomenon especially human one is the essential element for the reconstruction of the society. theoretical consideration for the present research is based on structural narrative approach. in this method, we look for the narrative structure and the signs relations within the texts. we will use victor turner theory to explain the processes, signs and rites. turner believed that rites contain actions, events, subjects which possess ambiguous boundaries and almost they are transited through verbal traditions. the collected data indicate that humans possess purity nature, while the impact of the social problem acts as an obstacle to improve humans. based on this criterion, societies face critical situations. according to attar’s opinions society's influences causes individuals to develop different characteristics. based on this view attar selects some of the birds each of which having particular characteristics that make them different from the other. attar maintains humans are dealers and arithmetician beings, who have tendencies toward static situation. therefore at the time when he introduces them as birds, they show no dynamic characters. in fact actors of this story look for their interests. the result of this type of thinking is that from among thousands of birds only a small numbers accept to travel and visit phoenix. this small group possesses extraordinary stamina and offers sacrifices so to gain compensations to the benefit of their society. this is the confronted liminial situation. personal typology of actors is divided to: economist actors introvert one’s, religious, and actors with no self-reliance, and with out feeling responsibility. attar claims that these characteristics are causes of the society’s critics.