an analysis on the relationships of characters in nezami’s khosrow & shirin

the basic issue in this article is to analyze the relationships of characters in nezami’s khosrow & shirin by using of greimas’s actors pattern. in nezami’s narrative we found the six actors that greimas mentioned; including: transmitter, recipient, subject, object, helper, and deterrent. according to the results of this article the transmitter is part of khosrow’s character – his unconsciousness – that appears in his dream in shape of anushirvan, his ancestor, and brings good news about shirin and shabdiz. the recipient is khosrow. the subject is shirin. the object is bringing khosrow & shirin together. the helper is shapur. the deterrent is maryam, khosrow’s wife, whose deterrent act ends with her death, as well as farhad, who does not show a noticeable deterrent force. “the love of farhad to shirin” is not a love story parallel to the love of “farhad and shirin”, but it exists throughout the story, and farhad plays the role of a deterrent actor (rival). according to this research, greimas’s theory is to an extent useful for the analysis of characters in nezami’s khosrow & shirin. based on this, the reader can follow the relationship and interaction of characters with a clear mind. through the comparison of the subject, recipient and deterrent actors in the two stories of khosrow & shirin and leyli & majnoon, we can find that the from the viewpoint of storytellers of khosrow & shirin freedom of the woman’s character and her decisiveness in action is valuable, while in the view of the storytellers of leyli & majnoon, is her loyalty to the traditional social mores and customs and her nature of obedience to her father or husband. this point shows the cultural differences of societies, in which the two stories originated. the outline of these two examples is the base for its spread to other persian-language love stories.