Abstract
This presentation looks for traces of Ferdowsi's epic in the best-selling novel by Simine Dāneshvar, Iran's first20th-century novelist.
These traces might at first have seemed to be no more than a set of more or less explicit references; Dāneshvar's fiction could have been seen as drawing legitimacy, strength and weight from the princes and kings of the epic, foremost among them Siyāvush and Key Khosrow. And this is what Dāneshvar does in part, by affirming the power of poetry and placing his text in a position of resistance through writing, which enables the sustenance of ancient heroes.
But this text, published in 1969, the year of the death of Āl-e Ahmad, her husband and another tutelary figure hovering over Dāneshvar's life and work, gradually appeared to us as an affirmation at the same time of the freedoms the writer was taking in relation to the burdens of an age-old, masculine tradition. Through a series of minute character twists, Dāneshvar turns the mythical, positive figures of the Book of Kings on their head, particularly that of Siyāvosh/Youssef, to give his female heroine the opportunity to take charge of protest and opposition in the face of the occupying forces (in this case British) in Iran. Poetic resistance thus enables the survival of ancient heroes, but also the advent of modern heroines.
